Soldiers' Daughters and Mothers' Sons
by Second Star On The Left
Summary: In a Westeros of strong women and their menfolk, war is brewing beyond what the Great Houses have the power to envision. The dragons are coming to conquer for the first time in three hundred years. The White Walkers spill forth from the Lands of Always Winter for the first time in a thousand years. Pinned between ice and fire, the Seven Kingdoms will stand or fall. Matriarchal AU.
1. Prologue

Men and women and their sons and daughters crowded the great space, girls who would rule the Seven Kingdoms and the boys who would be their Lord Protectors sitting beside their mothers and fathers, all of them eyeing Sweetrobin Arryn and Joffrey Baratheon with wary distaste – the only boys of their generation who would inherit, the only ones who would rule in their own right, who would both administer their domains and guard them.

Robert Baratheon, King and Lord Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, stood at the head of the long table and slammed his fist down into the wood for quiet.

"Word has come from across the Narrow Sea," he called, his temper kept firmly in check by Myrcella's hand resting lightly on his arm. "Word of dragons and a Targaryen naming herself queen."

He looked down the table, down at the men and women who were his to command and the girls and boys who would be Myrcella's.

"My daughter is the only woman who will sit on the Iron Throne as my heir," Robert said, meeting the eyes of every man, woman and child sitting before him. "If any one of you desires to support the whore who birthed a horselord's bastard, you are free to leave this room now."

He looked to Myrcella, who rolled her eyes – his eyes, his mother's eyes – in resignation.

"But do not think that you will leave Harrenhall."

* * *

**AN:** _So, AU, as you might expect from me. I've largely given up on the whole canon-compliant thing because there're so many possibilities in AU fic that I can't not explore._  
_What's AU here? Well, a whole shit-ton of crap – this, along with much of the other AU aspects, will become clearer in the next two chapters, which will be set in Rebellion- and Conquest-era Westeros, before we get into the story proper, which is of course set in something approaching GoT-era Westeros._  
_Age-wise, the younger cast are all approximately six years older than in canon (this was mainly so the ones I need to be of marriageable age would be of marriageable age so that the plot can fire along nice and quickly). Again, this will be clarified as we go on._  
_The dynamics between the Houses are relatively similar to canon, but the dynamics within the Houses are often enormously different. Certain characters will seem slightly OOC, but this can be attributed (I think) to being older and more mature, and also to the different circumstances in which they were raised thanks to the matriarchal system in place in so much of Westeros._  
_I don't want to give away too much, but this is only a prologue and yeah. Idk man. It's been up on AO3 a while and seems to have gone down pretty well, so lemme know what you think._


	2. The Conquest of Westeros

_Warnings for misogynistic sentiments which I do not share, my distrust of House Targaryen, stanning of Houses Dayne, Stark, Tully, Tyrell and Lannister, and huge, disgusting amounts of canon changes and headcanon because we know next to nothing about the Valyrian Freehold but I have lots of theories and nonsense made-up stuff._

* * *

"What little chance there was of saving the Freehold is gone with this message, Aegon," Rhaenys insisted, setting herself firmly between him and the door He had been prepared to march out and call the levies, to sing the fire-song and spill what blood was needed so that they could fly east and reclaim all that had been lost. He knew that the men would support him, knew that they were as eager for vengeance on the ice-singers and as lonesome for home as he was himself. "We must look elsewhere if we are to regain our place in the world."

"Regain, Rhaenys? Where are we to look to regain our place? You think the savages who are taking advantage of the Freehold's fall in the east will welcome back their betters? We are _dragonlords, _sister – I will not sully our line with that scum. None of those bastards and fools will ever call themselves Targaryen, I swear it now."

Visenya, quieter than Rhaenys and twice as lethal for all that, uncoiled herself from her chair.

"If you will not look east, brother," she said, rising to her feet and tripping lightly across the room on velvet-shod feet, "then perhaps look west."

* * *

Dragons, Aegon thought, were a wonderful weapon.

Song-steel was almost as good where the dragons could not venture, of course, song-steel wielded by men of the Freehold, men with fire in their veins and strength – true strength – in their bones.

Rhaenys and Visenya rode at his flanks, fierce and beautiful with silver-gold hair streaming behind them like banners, lovelier by far than the banners Orys the Bastard and Selwyn Dayne carried, three-headed dragon vermillion on sable. Aegon trusted Orys and Selwyn as he trusted few others, his bastard half-brother and his blood-brother, a brother not by birth but by bonds sealed in their own blood, two men who had saved his life a dozen times and whose lives had been saved a dozen times each by him. Selwyn had even expressed an interest in marrying Visenya, and would have done, had Aegon not talked his sisters around to his plan.

The bloodlines, after all, must be kept clean.

* * *

It was not until they reached the range that men called the Mountains of the Moon – mountains, they said, when the highest of them might have served as foothills to the great Dragonspine in the north of the Freehold – that Aegon began to wonder if perhaps this Westeros was even more savage and strange than he and his sisters had feared.

He heard the rumours of course, rumours of women ruling as Queens and their husbands lowered to what they called Lord Protectors, glorified soldiers who stood behind the seven thrones of this land, but he had dismissed them out of hand – what sort of land, after all, allowed its womenfolk to rule? What sort of man allowed his wife to run his household, much less his realm?

When Jasper Arryn, King of Vale and Mountain, invited Aegon to his private solar – just Aegon, not Visenya and Rhaenys – and it was easy to accept that yes, the rumours had been just that, that men did hold the power here as they did in all civilised parts of the world.

"You wish to name yourself King of Westeros," Arryn said, clearly amused by the notion. "Your dragons should be claim enough, I suppose, but you cannot expect our people to bend the knee on sight. They will fight."

"Your kings are nothing," Aegon said with a shrug. "Who can stand against dragonfire and the strength of Valyria?"

Jasper Arryn's smile never faded at all.

"Aside from myself, there is but one king in Westeros," he said, leaning back in his great cream-and-blue upholstered chair. There was a falcon embroidered on his breast, delicate work, silver-white thread on midnight-blue velvet, and his boots were fine cream leather. A man used to fine things, a man who did not want war. Aegon could work with such a man – some of House Targaryen's finest friends in the Freehold had retired to become little more than merchants, despite the fire-song in their blood, managing the conquered lands while the Targaryens and their more like-minded companions had gone about conquering more, before the Doom had fallen. "And he sits far to the south in sands and stone, a desert. And he will only be king for a short time longer, old and grey as he is, and then his daughter will take the throne – the Dornish are a queer folk, prickly and peculiar. They may well be your greatest challenge."

Aegon frowned, tugging his cloak closer around himself. It was abominably cold in the thin air of the Eyrie – such a name for a castle! How foolish! House Targaryen had moved from one Dragonstone to another, although one had rested on the upper slopes of one of the fire-mountains and the other in the middle of the sea, and that name made sense because of the dragons sung into the stone in both to be woken by Valyrian blood and fire-song. He longed briefly for the bright sun and searing heat of the Freehold, but pushed aside the thought viciously – the Freehold was gone, as Rhaenys insisted, as Visenya lamented, and there was naught any of them could do about it now.

"If there are no kings, who rules the other seven kingdoms?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Do you mean to tell me that men are willing to submit to men who wear no crown? To mere _lords?"_

"I never mentioned lords, Your Grace," Jasper Arryn said easily, pouring a cup of wine and smiling over the rim. "But I shall speak at length about queens, for we have five of those."

* * *

"Lord Protectors," Aegon said scornfully. "What sort of man submits to the will of his _wife?"_

"I have seen you do so several times," Visenya called from beyond the bath-screen, a laugh in her voice. She rarely laughed, his youngest sister, especially not in company beyond himself, Rhaenys, Selwyn and Orys. A splash indicated that she was finished bathing, and sure enough she emerged from behind the screen wrapped in a white robe that was too thin for his comfort only a moment later – once, he would have worried at Selwyn and Orys seeing her so near to nude because she was his sister, because it was improper and he was her lord and head of her House, but now she was his wife, and he would gut any man who presumed to desire her, even one so dear to him as Selwyn. "I find it interesting that we know so little of these people. How is it that even we in the Freehold were ignorant of their ways?"

Aegon slumped further into his chair, knuckling his forehead as he thought. Jasper Arryn's submission and subsequent lecture had been delightful and enlightening by turns, but it had been disquieting more than anything. Aegon was sure that the Eyrie and its bannermen had bent the knee only because they had never faced an actual threat before, hidden behind their excuses for mountains (_they may well be the highest in the known world now, what with the Dragonspine broken) _and with wildlings – true savages, worse even than those in the far east of the Freehold, near as bad as the horselords on the Great Plain – in every crevice.

"Mayhaps we might negotiate with these queens," Rhaenys said, looking up from the fire she had crooned into a roaring blaze that could heat even the icy rooms they had taken as their own. "They may be more sensible than the men we are used to facing – women think in terms of their children, their families, less in terms of their pride as men do. Mayhaps, if Visenya and I were to ride out-"

"No," Aegon said flatly, and Rhaenys dipped her head in acceptance of his decision. "We will send orders. We will leave a small garrison here, until we can be assured of Lord Arryn's loyalty to House Targaryen, and we will settle on the coast nearest Dragonstone. We will need a city, after all."

"There is a city," Orys said lazily, sprawled inelegantly across his chair. He was all shoulders and chest and thick muscle, corded arms and neck and huge hands, and Aegon had never seen a man so deadly with a war hammer. "Two of them, in fact. Selwyn and I spoke with some of the little lordlings today, while you were taking the king's crown from his cowardly head. Two cities, brother."

"Where?" Visenya asked, folding herself onto the floor to lean against Aegon's legs. "Where are these cities?"

"They call one Lannisport," Selwyn said from the other side of the room, sitting in shadow and polishing his milky-white sword with a silken cloth. "House Lannister rules there, from a great castle called Casterly Rock – the Queens of the Rock, they call themselves. Proud and beautiful and filthy rich, everyone else calls them."

Aegon grunted and motioned for Selwyn to go on. Orys doubtless would have ferreted out where the finest whorehouses were, but Selwyn would have had the good sense to uncover the truth about where the power lay.

"The other is to the south, but also on the western coast," Selwyn said, never lifting his gaze from Dawn's blade. "Oldtown, I have heard it called, home to the Citadel where these maesters of theirs train, and also the centre of worship for their Seven Gods."

In the Freehold, there had been no gods – there had only been R'hllor, the fire for whom the dragonlords sang their song, and the Other, for whom the ice-singers had brought down the Doom. Not gods, not as these Westerosi saw them, and they had not been worshipped, exactly. Many of the fire-singers had fled east to the Shadow when the Doom began, east to battle the Shadow that threatened R'hllor and the firelight, and with them had gone much of the skill. There would be little song-steel forged now, and Aegon feared that the dragons his father had sung into slumber on Dragonstone would not be woken.

"They are devout?" he asked of Rhaenys, who had spent her day with the woman who had been a queen only that morning. "These Westerosi. Will they expect us to bow to their gods?"

"Here in the Vale of Arryn, they do not seem to be," she said with a shrug, taking up her harp and tucking her feet under herself in her chair. "Many of the women seem to find the idea of praying ludicrous – why pray, they say, when they have the bounty of their lush valleys, their lovely little port town?"

"But beyond Jasper Arryn's lands?"

"Who can say?" Rhaenys said, shrugging once more as she strummed the opening notes of one of the songs their mother had written before she died in the Flight. "Who can say, Aegon? We will have to wait and see."

* * *

Aegon left Selwyn in charge of the Eyrie, trusting him and only him to keep Jasper Arryn, a wilier man than the one-time king would have liked Aegon to realise, in check.

"Hold this place for me, brother," he said, clasping Selwyn's wrist, pressing together the twin scars that curved sinuously around their forearms and marked them as blood-brothers. "Keep it safe."

Selwyn smiled that deadly, mirthless smile that made him so feared, and bowed his head.

"As you will, Your Grace," he mocked, shaking out hair that was paler silver even than Aegon's own. "Conquer this place as our people took Ghis and all the rest, Aegon – for the memory of the Freehold."

That Aegon should do it for the memory of the family they had all lost when the Doom came, the family they had all lost to the ice-singers and their jealousy, went unsaid.

* * *

They travelled over land to return to the site Aegon had chosen for his city – their city – three great hills together right at the mouth of the wide, dark river that Orys mentioned the locals called the Blackwater Rush, because it ran fast and dark.

"It was ill done to leave the Sword of the Morning behind," Rhaenys said, speaking to Aegon but watching Visenya. "We have no general to rival Selwyn, and few enough swordsmen save you, brother."

Aegon and Selwyn had bound as blood-brothers on the day they had received Blackfyre and Dawn, making them the Evenfall Blade and the Sword of the Morning, the first swords of the Freehold. The titles meant nothing now, nothing at all now that Aegon and Selwyn could not stand as equals, not when Aegon meant to crown himself King, but that did not lessen their skill. Any man who bore either sword, the fiercest Targaryen and Dayne warriors of all, was feared and revered in equal measure from one end of the Freehold to the other.

Aegon knew Rhaenys was right – Visenya's silence told all of her opinion on the matter – but he needed someone he could trust implicitly to guarantee the Arryns' loyalty. Lady Arryn had made the mistake of admitting that her husband's House was bound to both the Storm Queen and the Queen in the North by marriage, and that House Arryn would not – could not, at risk of their lofty notion of honour – raise arms against Houses Baratheon and Stark. Only Selwyn could be trusted to hold them. Aegon trusted Selwyn before even Rhaenys and Visenya, and far ahead of Orys. He loved his bastard brother, but Orys' taste for women and wine and warfare had led him into trouble more times than Aegon could count.

"We will take these Seven Kingdoms one at a time," Aegon said quietly. "And when I sit as King with you as my Queens, dear sisters, we will call Selwyn home."

"Where is home now, Aegon?" Visenya asked sourly, turning her horse and looking out east, out across the sea. "That was once our home, far out there. Do you intend to forge a new Freehold? To wake the slumbering dragons and create a new legion of dragonlords? Do you imagine that you can teach the fire-song to those without it in their blood?"

To imagine such things was the closest there had ever been to blasphemy in the Freehold, and Aegon was too stunned by Visenya's outburst to counter it. She was the strongest singer of them all, of every exile and refugee they had gathered on Dragonstone, and here she was daring to say such vile things!

"The bloodlines will be kept pure," Aegon said shortly. "I will not see them sullied, little sister. We will create a new home for ourselves, perhaps not of the same sort as the Freehold, but it will be _ours. _We will forge it anew from this savagery, and we will rise once more."

"And then what, brother?" Orys asked lazily from Rhaenys' other side, fingers drumming idly on the head of his great spiked warhammer. "Feasting and festivities?"

"Then, Orys," Aegon said, watching Visenya until she turned her horse back and continued at his side. "Then, we will have our vengeance on the ice-singers. I have heard it said that they fled west, and what these Westerosi call the North would be an ideal home for them."

He nodded, meeting Visenya's eyes – as lilac as his own were violet, as Rhaenys' were indigo – and smiling grimly.

"We will avenge all that was taken from us. The ice-singers will pay for what they did to the Freehold. Valyria will have vengeance."

"Fire and blood," Orys intoned, bowing his head and thumping his fist to his breast. None had dared question it when Aegon had taken the Freehold's words, Valyria's words, as House Targaryen's own.

"Fire and blood," Aegon echoed back. "We will take what is ours through fire and blood, just as we always have. But first, patience."

* * *

The people along the coast between the mountains and the river were downtrodden, behaving as slaves despite apparently being free, and they were the first people Aegon had ever seen not to flinch at the sight of a dragon.

At first, he put that down to some sort of foolhardy bravery – what sort of man or woman without fire-song in their blood did not flinch from a dragon? – but he eventually discovered, with Rhaenys' gentle questioning and Orys' drunken voyages of discovery, that it was not a lack of fear.

It was a lack of _anything._

"Harren the Black, they call their Lord Protector," Orys declared over the morning meal, shovelling down bacon almost faster than the cooks could dish it up. "A ferocious, vile man with more sons than he knows what to do with. They say he has a Queen, tucked away on some island off the western coast. Alannys, they call her, the Salt Queen, Queen of Isles and Shore, the fairest woman in Westeros. Of course, we'll probably hear that of every queen we attempt to conquer," he admitted, seeming delighted at the prospect. "Mayhaps you'll leave me behind somewhere to guarantee their loyalty."

Rhaenys sniffed in disapproval. "Tell your king the rest of it," she said coldly. "Tell him precisely what you told me."

"This Queen of his is supposedly _locked _away in some place they call Pyke," Visenya said, her voice as sharp as Rhaenys. "He has seized power by force, and even now continues to build what he claims will be the largest, grandest castle in all the world when he is finished with it. He has already named it Harrenhall, in honour of his own vanity."

"We spoke to many people," Rhaenys said. She meant, of course, that their spies had spoken to many people, but that mattered little. The end result was always the same. "They worship other gods, these "Ironborn." A Drowned God, they say, whatever that means, but there are many who think that their Lord Protector has sinned against his god. And there are more yet who did not come from these Iron Isles of their, natives of this land, who worship these Seven, and they are even more abhorred by his supposed sin."

Aegon cared little for sin, cared little for any god's vengeance, but he knew that he could turn this religious outrage to his advantage.

"This middle kingdom, shore and stone and isles and whatever other nonsense they name it – it will fall if this Harren the Black falls? The people will likely bend the knee to their liberator?"

"Undoubtedly," Orys said. While not Selwyn's equal, or even Aegon's, he was still a canny military operator and a brilliant soldier. "They hate him, brother, more even than the slave-takers hated us for taking the fifth."

The slave-takers in the east, around Slaver's Bay, had despised their overlords for taking the tax of one fifth of all profit that was not food, the same tax they took from every one of their subjects – the dragonlords themselves paid a fifth into the Freehold's bank.

"Then we will go to these underlings," Aegon said simply. "Who holds the greatest seat on the mainland? I doubt greatly that Harren the Black's House will turn against him, after all."

"House Tully of Riverrun," Visenya said. "Their Lord Protector is a man named Edmyn. I think you will find him amenable to any plan that will depose Harren Hoare."

* * *

Riverrun was a quaint little place, although they called it a castle, nestled between two rivers and oddly triangular in shape. Whispers of Balerion's shadow in the sky had spread throughout the riverlands that made up the centre of Westeros, and Aegon was momentarily lonely for his sisters, just as Balerion was for his, as they circled down to the castle that would hopefully prove to be home to allies.

He expected to be greeted by Edmyn Tully, but was dismayed to discover the first of these strong women Jasper Arryn warned him of was fiercer than he could have dreamed – Lysa Tully, as tall as he was himself, with red fire for hair and blue fire for eyes, was half-wild with joy at the prospect of being freed from the Ironborn, and she welcomed Aegon into her hall as a long-lost brother.

She was the first Westerosi woman not to shy away from him and his dragon, the first woman not beaten down by Harren the Black or under the thumb of Jasper Arryn or one of his men, and he found himself equal parts intoxicated and disgusted.

It stunned him further when he was witness to the wedding of her eldest daughter, her heir, a woman who Aegon knew would grow into her twin by the name of Sansa, and it was not Sansa who took her husband's name and colours, but rather the other way around – the young Mallister was only too glad to remove his own cloak and replace it with red and blue and silver, a trout leaping across his back, and Aegon could not even begin to comprehend how a man could so willingly give up his authority.

"I will remove Harren Hoare and his sons from your lands," he said flatly when they met in Lysa's solar the following morning. "But I will have your fealty in return."

"It is yours," she said, folding elegantly to her knees at his feet. He wore a ring of song-steel, a trifle to most but an heirloom of House Targaryen that had been passed from one Evenfall Blade to another with Blackfyre for longer than any could remember. It was this ring, three dragons twisted together in ways that stung the eyes with a single ruby in each of their gaping maws, that Lysa Tully, Lady of Riverrun and Paramount of the Trident, kissed to seal her House to his.

He still would have rathered that Edmyn took more authority than that of Lord Protector of the Riverlands, but he was fast coming to understand that it would be a losing battle.

* * *

Rhaenys had ridden south with Orys to what were apparently called the Stormlands, south and just barely west of Dragonstone, where the Storm Queens of House Baratheon ruled from Storm's End, a castle apparently impossible to take by force.

Aegon breathed deep the scent of melting stone and burning scum and grinned like a madman, startling Edmyn Tully and the rest of them when he began to laugh. He'd barely been on the ground after rousting Harren Hoare and his forces but one of these curious maesters had found him, letter sealed with three-headed dragon in hand, bearing news of the fall of Storm's End. He had stood for a long time watching the stone running down Harrenhall's towers in great rivulets, like unmanaged stone being sung, and there was a perverse sort of beauty in seeing the enemies of Valyria burn like that.

"Fire and blood," he called to the Tullys and their men. "Valyria lives on!"

The Westerosi watched him with uncertainty in their eyes, but the men of the Freehold roared their victory to the skies.

* * *

Aegon would _never _forgive Orys for this.

He had always known that his brother had an abominable weakness for the flesh of women – Orys had kept more body-slaves than any man Aegon had ever known, save their father – but he had never thought that Orys was stupid enough to let himself be led around by the cock by some dark-haired chit with more brains than was good for a woman.

"You've _married _her?" he roared, boot slamming into Orys' chest and sending him crashing back down onto the floor as he scrambled to sit up. "What sort of blind fucking fool are you, man? Not a moon's turn ago you were asking me to legitimise you, and now you take some Westerosi whore's name and colours and pledge to serve as Lord Protector of the Stormlands while she sits pretty as Lady of Storm's End? When did whatever little sense you had take its leave of you, you stupid bastard?"

Orys managed to deflect Aegon's next kick, but he stilled when he found Blackfyre resting against the back of his neck.

"I should take your head for this," he snarled, his fury mounting higher with every moment. "You have betrayed every oath sworn on Dragonstone, you whoreson-"

"Fuck you, Targaryen," Orys growled. "Take my head, but remember that a kinslayer is worse than a bastard. Mark my words, Aegon – you kill me, and your new Freehold will crumble in a generation."

"Bollocks," Aegon said sharply. "I kill you and I don't have to worry about sullying the bloodlines-"

"My arse," Orys spat. "My fucking arse, Aegon – if you'd take your head out of your own arse, you'd realise that we _need _to marry into these fucking savages to try and keep their loyalty. They'll rebel if we don't intermarry, and there are so few of us left that we'll be inbred within five generations."

"I will not-"

"You may not care that your children may turn out mad or deformed, but I do. Selwyn does. We _all _do, Aegon – the Freehold is dead. Much of our families are dead. We are all that is left, and if we are to survive, we _must _marry the savages."

Aegon pulled Blackfyre back with a groan of despair.

"I should not have to deal with this," he snapped, sheathing the sword with more force than was strictly necessary. "Rhaenys is in the Westerlands, Visenya in the Reach, and I should be leading Edmyn Tully's men south west so my sisters can meet me in the middle-"

"Aegon, dissolve the marriages to Rhaenys and Visenya," Orys suddenly pleaded. "Robar and Selwyn already are alienated by them, and every time one of the Westerosi hears that you married not one but _two _of your sisters… It is as if you are a monster, brother. You must dissolve the marriages. Robar and Selwyn will still have Rhaenys and Visenya, you know that-"

"No," Aegon said, turning on his heel and stalking from the room. "You may stay here with your savage. You all may marry into filth, for all I care, but House Targaryen is the last of the Nine, and we will remain _pure!"_

* * *

It was a relief to have Visenya and Rhaenys back to him, even if Edmyn Tully and the rest of the Westerosi looked at them like they had as many heads as the dragon on their banner when he ushered his sisters into his chambers and they did not emerge till morning.

"They say that you are not a true king, dragons or no," Rhaenys said, her head resting on his shoulder. Visenya was curled against his other side, his seed still wet on her thighs, and she hummed in agreement. "They say that until their High Septon crowns you, you are nothing but an invader."

"What sort of crown would you like, brother?" Visenya asked mockingly. She had turned bitter since they had come to Westeros, longing still for the Freehold and Valyria. "The Storm Queen wore golden antlers for the stag on her sigil, Jasper Arryn spreading falcon's wings on his brow in moonstone. I do not know what Alannys Hoare's crown was like before you melted it and her down, but I assume it was as vile and ostentatious as her arms."

"Three heads has the dragon," Aegon said quietly, pulling his sister-wives closer and pressing a kiss to each of their brows. "Song-steel in black, with rubies for eyes."

"To match the Evenfall Blade's ring," Rhaenys said, her voice rich with approval. "I will send for Selwyn in the morning-"

"No," Aegon said sharply. What Orys had said about Selwyn and Robar Fowler – they were loyal, there was no doubting that, but Aegon worried that they may become disloyal because of their discontent with his marriage to Visenya and Rhaenys. "Selwyn must stay in the Eyrie to keep Lord Arryn under close watch."

"Who, then?" Visenya asked, rising from the bed and walking to the window, unabashed in her nudity. "Selwyn is the finest singer we have-"

_"You _are the finest singer we have," Aegon countered. "You will sing the crown that will bring Westeros to heel."

He trusted Selwyn Dayne with everything in him, but he had trusted Orys the Bastard the same, and that had brought him only betrayal. He trusted Robar Fowler not as much as his blood-brother and bastard brother, song-brother only as he was, but it was enough for him to be confident that he would not have to worry about Robar any more than Selwyn.

Visenya went to the nearest smith the next morning and sang all day, and when she was finished, the crown was the most beautiful thing Aegon had ever seen.

* * *

"A city indeed," Rhaenys laughed, looking down on the unfolding coastline below them. "And here we thought that they could not rival us – I am eager now to return to the Westerlands to see this Lannisport of theirs. Would that it were as beautiful as this!"

Even Aegon had to admit that Oldtown was very beautiful – the High Tower sat tall and proud in the centre of the city, much as the Tower of the Nine had been the centre of Valyria, as the Moon Steps had been the centre of Mantarys. Directly across from it, to the north, the Citadel rose in a sort of bizarre mimicry of Volantine architecture, swooping and arching and twisting in ways that shouldn't have been possible beyond sung rock from the fire-mountains. Aegon's heart ached momentarily for Dragonstone, the true Dragonstone high up in the Dragonspine, not the pale mockery they had created on that forsaken island, the western outpost of the Freehold that had become the last refuge of Old Valyria.

To the south of the High Tower, he focused on the vast building with its crystal roof that dominated the skyline. Delicate spires of what looked like either crystal or spun glass pierced the sky, and all about was elegance and beauty and something that dandled dangerously close to what Aegon might call perfection. Visenya (and Selwyn) sometimes sung steel into those kind of fanciful shapes, but he had never seen glass or crystalwork to match it.

"The Starry Sept of Oldtown," Visenya called. "The centre of the Faith of the Seven, and the place where you will wear your crown for the first time, brother. Are you prepared?"

His smile was a sudden, fierce thing, mirrored back to him on his sisters' faces, so alike to his own.

"I have been prepared for this from the moment we set foot on Westerosi soil, sister," he called back in reply. "Come – we have a realm to finish conquering!"

* * *

The Hightowers – one time Queens of Oldtown. Aegon found them fascinating despite himself.

They had more titles even than he would have had as head of House Targaryen, Evenfall Blade, Song Spinner and Singer-General, had the Freehold not fallen. Lady of the High Tower and Lord Protector of Oldtown alike seemed to have an endless barrage of nonsense attached to their names, and even with all their pretentions to grandeur – Aegon listened to what was not said, and knew that Lady Hightower was Queen in all but name – he found that he actually _liked _them, Others take them.

It helped, of course, that they bent the knee so readily, and that they were ready to explain just what it was that made the maesters so damned special as none others had been.

"They are assigned to every noble House in this land, great and small, and yet they take no side?"

"Individual maesters, perhaps," Lady Sulyn said, reclining on a couch of cedar and red silk. She was a handsome woman with honey-brown hair and wide, dark eyes, and she was fully aware of how attractive she was. However, she, like every other Westerosi woman he had encountered, did nothing to stir Aegon's blood – they lacked the fire he desired in a woman, the fire Rhaenys and Visenya had in greater volume than any other woman he had ever met. "But the Citadel is neutral, and House Hightower guards the Citadel, so in effect, we too are neutral."

"And yet you have sworn fealty to House Targaryen."

Sulyn exchanged a wicked grin with her husband, Welmar, an astonishingly tall man with a shock of red-brown hair that stuck up in every direction no matter how often his wife patted it down.

"Who are we to deny our rightful kings?" he said, his smile widening into something predatory. "Now, allow us to tell you about House Gardener…"

* * *

Selwyn in the Eyrie, Orys in Storm's End, Visenya aiming for Highgarden and Rhaenys returning west to Casterly Rock.

Aegon considered what Sulyn and Welmar Hightower had told him of the Gardener Queen, what Edmyn and Lysa Tully had told him of the Queen of the Rock, and he smiled.

It would not take much to goad them into open battle. Then, he could recall Rhaenys and Visenya, Vhagar and Meraxes, and with them, he and Balerion would take all of the south. Once they had the south – save for this Dorne everyone warned him of – he could turn his attentions to the North.

He knew, somehow, that he would find ice-singers there.

* * *

Spread out below them was a banquet of death, fires burning, land burning, men burning, the smells of steel and flesh and earth and rock melting and twisting and roasting rising up even to the Targaryens on dragonback.

Aegon threw back his head and laughed, delighting in the thrill of victory. He had missed this, missed the fierce joy that came of proving to the rest of the world that Valyria would always, always conquer.

"Aegon the Conqueror, they already call you," Rhaenys shouted across, matching his laughter with her own. "I will return with the Lion Crown, brother, have no fear of that!"

"And I with the Rose Crown," Visenya said, more serious than Rhaenys but with a gleam of triumph in her lilac eyes. "Celebrate your victory, brother – only two kingdoms remain of these seven. Soon, they will be yours."

"Ours, sister," Aegon said, unaware of the maddened fervour in his face and voice. "House Targaryen will rule these Seven Kingdoms. I swear it now."

* * *

Aegon had intended on returning either to Oldtown, where the Hightowers had graciously offered to host him and his army, to Riverrun, where the Tullys had offered to prepare a week of festivities in his honour, or to the villages spread out of the three hills at the mouth of the Blackwater, where he had first come ashore in Westeros. King's Landing, the smallfolk – peasants – were calling it now, now that he had his craftsmen creating a city for him there, and he had intended returning to inspect the building work.

Instead, he received a missive sealed with a direwolf, asking that he cross the Neck to meet with the Queen in the North and her Lord Protector, Evanda and Torrhen of House Stark.

He sent word to Selwyn that he would visit the Vale on his way back to King's Landing – he truly did like that name – and turned north with his third of the army.

The Starks may offer peace terms, but if Aegon heard so much as a single note of the ice-song, saw so much as a single mark of it in the features of any man, woman or child he met, the North would burn. Valyria's revenge was more important to him than almost anything else. He would find the ice-singers, and they would burn.

"Fire and blood," he said to himself, not paying any heed to the glances his bannermen sent him – not Orys and Selwyn, not Bastard and Sword of the Morning, but Edmyn and Welmar, Tully and Hightower, which saddened him. His brothers had carried his banners for years, and it was odd for them not to be at his side.

* * *

The weather worsened steadily the further north they travelled, and Edmyn in particular seemed amused by Aegon's distaste of the snow. He had never experienced it himself, of course – it had not snowed in Valyria, in Old Valyria, in decades – and found that he truly disliked it. It seemed too much like the work of ice-singers for his comfort.

"It's too cold to rain, so the North has snows and hail most of the time," Welmar explained with a shrug. He and Edmyn seemed even larger in their hulking furs, and Aegon, though not a small man himself, was glad of Balerion's presence. He had no doubt that there were some among the Westerosi party that rode with his own Valyrians that would take pleasure and pride in taking his head. "You'll be glad of any furs you can lay hands on if we're to go all the way to Winterfell, mark my words."

"Winterfell is the furthest north?"

Edmyn and Welmar hid their amusement poorly.

"It's about halfways between the Neck and the Wall," Welmar said. "The Wall is the northernmost border – beyond that is wildling land, and beyond that again is the Lands of Always Winter. Don't think any man not a Stark has travelled there in centuries, and even the Starks have left well enough alone for decades. You don't want anything further than the Wall, Your Grace, trust us on that – and the Starks have absolute control over their people. I haven't heard of an uprising in the North in years, not since the Greystarks and… Was it the Boltons? And that was years ago."

Lands of Always Winter, and the Starks alone visited them? Could it be that there were some with the ice-song in their blood who had been born outside the Freehold? It was said that there were some in the Summer Isles born with the fire-song, although they had no dragons, and some in the lands of the Shadow, although those reports might have been corrupted by the Freeholders who had fled east.

But if these Starks were ice-singers – even if they weren't singers, if they had the song in them…

Regardless of whether or not they were the singers who had brought about the Doom, Aegon would see them burn. Fire and blood to repay their debt to the Freehold.

* * *

Balerion screamed his disgust as they rode through yet another blizzard – for his part, Aegon had never been so cold and uncomfortable in all his life. He was only thankful that they were finally at their destination, a tiny market town without even a name that clung to the keep of House Tallhart, bannermen to House Stark and the Queens in the North.

A tall man with dark hair, almost black, falling around his face in untidy curls, knelt to greet Aegon.

"I am Torrhen, Lord Protector of the North and husband of Evanda of House Stark, Queen in the North. You are welcome, Aegon of House Targaryen. You have many titles claimed, Your Grace, and I know not what of them to use."

Torrhen Stark stood up, taller by a good margin than Aegon and… Not lean, precisely, but _hard. _Edmyn had made some jape about the North paring away soft edges, leaving only ice and stone in its wake, and the man before them seemed living proof of it.

"Bend the knee to me and I will tell you which to use," Aegon said lightly. "Given my experience of Westeros thus far, I had expected to be met by your Queen – am I to be insulted in this manner?"

Stark's smile seemed almost to laugh.

"Her Grace would have been the one to greet you had her pains not begun just hours before your arrival," he said, shaking his head. "The maesters tried to convince her to remain at Winterfell, but she insisted on making the journey here as soon as she heard that my sister had bent the knee – I believe she is married to one of your generals, now."

"You are Myrcella Baratheon's brother?" Aegon asked, only now seeing the similarities between the two. The Lady of Storm's End, once the Storm Queen, had finer features, but she and her brother shared the same deep, intensely blue eyes and untidy black curls. "Well met, then – my brother told me that your sister's men gave a valiant fight."

"Valiant, perhaps, but futile," Torrhen said, still smiling that near-laughter smile. "Come, King Aegon, a Valyrian in Westeros. We have some little festivities prepared. Her Grace hopes that her labour will be finished by morning so she might receive you properly herself."

* * *

"Some little festivities" proved to be one of the most gregarious feasts Aegon had had the pleasure of partaking in since his arrival in Westeros, and the announcement half-ways through that the Queen had birthed a daughter – her second girl, her fifth child – was met with such a roar as Aegon had never heard.

"Heir and a spare," Edmyn murmured from his place to Aegon's left. "Our Luanne is the same – Sansa is heir, but Luanne is important because she will be heir if anything were to happen to Sansa. I know Jasper Arryn only ascended to the Weirwood Throne because his older brother, Jon, wanted to forge a chain in the Citadel. Word was that women frightened the poor man, and becoming a maester was the perfect escape."

Edmyn and Welmar were fonts of information on even the most trivial of subjects, but Aegon found himself impatient for word of Queen Evanda's condition – he had no intention of staying here any longer than he had to. Not a single Northman he had met so far had the ice-song in their blood, in their colouring, and he was impatient to return south to see what progress had been made on his city.

"Her Grace is insisting that she will be well enough to meet with you on the morrow, Your Grace," Torrhen said, appearing suddenly in front of Aegon. The man moved with an almost freakish quietness, as if he spent long hours stalking game in the deep woods that Aegon had seen when he and Balerion had made a patrol of the area. Mayhaps he did, for all Aegon knew. "Liselle, our newest daughter, is a strong babe. Her Grace is most pleased – she wishes you to have her compliments, and to know that she is eager to meet the man who cowed the Lannisters and drove Marelle Gardener to finally take a husband."

"The Rose Queen has taken a husband?" Aegon asked, surprised. He had not had word from either of his sister-wives since beginning his journey north, and had assumed that they had made short work of both Highgarden and Casterly Rock. "I was not told of this."

"Aye, she has," Torrhen said, crouching on his hunkers with a smile. Aegon was fast coming to hate that laughing smile. "Her Lord Seneschal, the second most powerful man in the Reach after her brother, the now-deceased Lord Protector – Tyrell, his name. Algar Tyrell. A good man, a good keeper of Highgarden. Her Grace Queen Marelle of House Gardener is now Marelle of House Tyrell, Lady of Highgarden, wife of Algar of House Tyrell, Lord Protector of the Reach. A handsome couple they'll make – Marelle's beautiful enough to make you weep, and Algar is as pretty as a girl – he's Sulyn Hightower's first cousin. A very handsome pair. Their eldest daughter will be heir now – seems poor Romana, Marelle's bastard, she was killed in the siege of Storm's End – she was my sister's ward there for a time. She was thinking of taking my nephew, Donnel, as her Lord Protector when the time came for her to assume the Rose Crown."

Welmar puffed up with pride at the intimation of his wife's beauty, and Torrhen's smile laughed a little harder, but he sagged visibly at the mention of the Gardener princess. It took Aegon a moment to remember hearing somewhere that the heir to Highgarden was supposedly a Florent by birth, even if Queen Marelle had never acknowledged her daughter's father – Welmar had been a Florent before he married Sulyn Hightower.

"A good girl, Romana," he sighed. "A good girl."

Torrhen's smile was replaced by a grimace of sympathy – Aegon knew from Rhaenys and Orys that this Donnel was Myrcella's nephew as well, her older brother's son. That same older brother had died during the siege, one of many casualties. The Stormlords had fought with a ferocity that had astounded even Rhaenys, had refused to be cowed by the sight of a dragon in their skies. It was admirable, if stupid.

"Am I to assume that you've not heard of Cerenna Lannister either, then?" Torrhen asked. "Her Grace Queen Rhaenys has torn huge tracts of the Lannisters' lands from them and given them to Lady Tully, but Cerenna refused to name Tybalt her heir – little Gerta, she's six or so, she's still the heir to Casterly Rock."

It was all Aegon could do to blink silently at Torrhen. He had ordered Rhaenys and Visenya to end the Gardeners and Lannisters, and here he was being told that his sisters had allowed Marelle Gardener and Cerenna Lannister to retain their sovereignty in all but name?

"I don't think you'll have much to worry about with Marelle," Torrhen said mildly. "She's a force to be reckoned with when riled, but she's a practical woman – from what we've heard of your last battle, she'll know better than to try and rise against you. The dragons are a powerful deterrent to would-be rebels, Your Grace, I can assure you of that. The Lannisters, however – well. They may cause trouble through sheer pig-headedness. I've never known Cerenna to be a sensible woman, but mayhaps even she will see that the dragons must triumph here."

Aegon had yet to grow used to the idea of queens without kings, and this new confirmation that the women truly did hold the power in so much of his new realm was unnerving.

"This is tantamount to treason-"

"You must understand, Your Grace, that in much of our land, your Queens will be seen as the true power. The Arryns and Martells are different to the rest of us – we understand women better than most."

Aegon would have disagreed, but he knew better than to insult his hosts by telling them just what he thought of their stance on women. Save for the female dragonlords and Singers, women in the Freehold had been wives, mothers and whores – there was no room for anything else. In Aegon's mind, aside from those women who could fight and Sing, there was no _need _for anything else.

"If you say so," he said diplomatically. "Tell me all you know of Cerenna Lannister."

Edmyn shook his head, almost laughing but not quite.

"Her father and mine were brothers," he said. "I know Cerenna better than any man outside the Westerlands – where would you like me to begin?"

* * *

The following morning, head filled with knowledge of Marelle Gardener – no, Marelle Tyrell – and Cerenna Lannister, sure that this would be a help in his negotiations, Aegon was presented to Evanda of House Stark, Queen in the North and Lady of Winterfell.

Her eyes were steely, icy grey.

Ice-singer grey.

He pushed aside his hatred – he could not sense the ice-song in her at all, so mayhaps it was a coincidence – and settled into the seat, trying to understand why it rankled so that he had been presented to her and not the other way around.

"King Aegon," she said levelly, as though she greeted hostile kings while settling a fussy newborn babe every day. Given some of the stories he had heard of the North, he would not be surprised if this was a not uncommon occurrence. Six children was it she had? Perhaps five, he could not quite remember. "Welcome to the North. I apologise for not standing to greet you last night, but Liselle decided that it was time House Stark had the security of a second daughter."

She barely so much as glanced at him, focused almost entirely on her daughter as she was, and Aegon wondered if perhaps he might use her distraction to his advantage-

"I will give up my crown and bend the knee," she said lightly, stroking her daughter's dark, curly hair and smiling. "And in return, I ask only that you send men to help man the Wall, and that you do not turn your dragons on my people as you did on Cerenna's and Marelle's, and on Jasper's and Alannys' and Myrcella's. I will support you fully, provided my people are safe."

"Your husband mentioned the possibility of rebellion in the Westerlands," Aegon said, masking his surprise at her lucidity well. "Is there a chance of that in the North?"

She snorted derisively, turned those hated eyes on him, and for the first time in a long time, Aegon felt a thrill of desire for a woman not his sister. He was disgusted with himself for it, but there was such fight in Evanda Stark that he reacted to it without thought for the impropriety, for the hatred between his blood and hers.

"House Arryn thinks that they are honourable, I'm sure you know," she said haughtily, tugging open the neck of her gown and setting the babe to nurse. "They are nothing compared to House Stark. If I swear fealty, you will have my fealty, Easterner. On that, you have my word."

* * *

His arrival in the Eyrie was not so auspicious as he might have hoped.

Or rather, Selwyn's greeting was not – Aegon had been elated at the chance to see his blood-brother again, to bring Selwyn south with him, to reunite the Evenfall Blade and Sword of the Morning, Targaryen and Dayne, brothers by all but birth.

As soon as they were alone, Aegon realised just how foolish he had been.

"Congratulations on your victories, brother," Selwyn said, an air of stiff formality that Aegon neither recognised nor liked coating his words. "King of six kingdoms, doubtless planning the conquest of the seventh – however do you have the time for it, with two wives to satisfy?"

"I will find you a wife of your own soon," Aegon promised carefully. "Perhaps you will follow Orys' example and marry one of these Westerosi-"

"I had a wife chosen not so long ago, Aegon, but she and I were torn apart by a higher power."

Aegon flinched back – the alien coldness in Selwyn's voice was worse than any anger could possibly have been. Selwyn, so reserved but so warm, was on the verge of losing his temper – something Aegon had only seen a handful of times in their lives.

"Selwyn-"

"Visenya and I have been lovers since we were barely more than children," he spat. "We would have been wed years ago had you not kept putting us off, kept telling us we had to wait for word from the Freehold. I _love _her, Aegon! I would have made her a good husband!"

"I know that," Aegon insisted, stunned. "I-"

"I have been your loyalist companion, your champion," Selwyn growled. "Your friend and your brother. Yet I sit here as- as a keeper of your prizes, the woman I love taken from me and no claim to any of this land, while Orys, who you treasure only by dint of his blood, is held up as a hero, sits as one of the most powerful men in the realm – I do not understand, Aegon. It is as though in crossing into Westeros, you forgot those of us who have supported you most staunchly all these years."

"How can you say that?" Aegon demanded. "How can you think that I do not prize you? You are my greatest friend, Selwyn, the brother I _chose-"_

But Selwyn was shaking his head, a knife suddenly in his hand.

"There are more than just myself dissatisfied with you, Aegon," he said quietly, rolling up his left sleeve as he spoke. The pale skin of his forearm was decorated in a swirling pattern of narrow raised scars, red and black and purple like burns and bruises, made by a Singer with a white-hot blade. Their twins snaked around Aegon's left arm, identical in form and colour, a physical mark of his and Selwyn's bond as blood-brothers. "Robar could not remain here, not knowing that you are serious about keeping both of your sisters as your wives. He loves Rhaenys as I love Visenya, Aegon," Selwyn continued, crossing the room to crouch beside the fire. "He will never forgive you for taking her."

"I am head of House Targaryen, and it has always been my right to refuse any man my sister's hand-"

"Aye, but Robar and I? Those scars on your right arm match Robar's – or at least, they do so long as he has not torn them."

"He would not."

"He would," Selwyn corrected, holding the now-glowing blade of his knife up for inspection. "As would I. You have broken what was left of the Freehold, Aegon – I cannot stand as your blood-brother now that you have crowned yourself a king, you fool."

House Targaryen had always been the unspoken leaders of the Council of Nine, the body that ruled the Freehold, but they had been the first among equals – the dragonlords had made it their business to topple kings for generations, had destroyed empires and ended dynasties that had lasted centuries. Monarchy had not been tolerated in any land that was ruled from Valyria.

Aegon had only taken a crown because he had no Freehold behind him, no vast army of fire-singers and dragonlords at his back to break any resistance that may have risen up against him. He could not stand as Governor here, not where they _needed _monarchy. How could Selwyn not understand that?

"Several of us have come to a decision," Selwyn said, oblivious to Aegon's turmoil. "This last kingdom, this Dorne – I have studied it as best I can without visiting on dragonback. You will not conquer it easily if at all, Aegon, and that is why we have decided to go there."

"Who is we?"

"Myself, Robar, Amys, Selina and Garold, our bannermen. We will take a ship from Gulltown – I have already made arrangements with Lord Arryn. We leave in two weeks, to give the Amys time to arrive – she is at Highgarden with Visenya. We wish to present ourselves at Sunspear together.

Dayne, Fowler, Manwoody, Blackmont and Yronwood. Five of the finest fire-singers left in the world, to Aegon's knowledge, five of the oldest Houses, the strongest bloodlines, and they wanted to _leave _him? He would not allow it!

"No-"

"Yes," Selwyn said, his temper back under control and his voice level once more. "Yes, Aegon – we cannot be part of this kingdom of yours. The Freehold may be dead, but we will not remain to watch you twist everything that Valyria once stood for into something that it stood against for its entire existence. We will go to Dorne and plead our case with these Martells."

He held up his knife once more, the blade now glowing blue-white, and began to sing.

Aegon had always loved listening to Selwyn sing – his brother had a beautiful voice, deep and powerful and rich in the fire-song, richer by far than his own – but now, in that moment, he wanted nothing more than for Selwyn never to sing so much as another note, because the song he was singing was something Aegon could only consider as evil.

Selwyn was singing the song needed to tear their blood-bond, violet eyes fixed on the path of the searing-hot knife as it cut straight lines from wrist to elbow.

Aegon wanted Selwyn to stop – needed Selwyn to stop, because he could feel the lines appearing on his own arm, mirroring Selwyn's – but was powerless to do anything.

"And we are brothers no more," Selwyn said, breathing heavily, when he set down the knife.

Aegon was gripping his left forearm hard enough to cut off the blood flow to his hand, trying to cut off the mind-numbing agony that had followed the path of Selwyn's knife.

"What of Orys?" he gasped, his knees giving out as the pain spiralled from his wrist to his elbow, intensifying with every wave. It was said that breaking a blood-bond could make a man go mad, and he had never believed that more fully than he did in that instant. "You are bound to him as to me-"

"Orys has not wronged me," Selwyn said with a shrug, pushing himself shakily to his feet. "Orys has not turned his back on everything our families have stood for these past hundreds of years. Orys has not betrayed Valyria as you have."

He pushed up his right sleeve, showing the bond-marks that tied him to Orys. The marks there were bolder than those that had once flowed around his left arm, the lines thicker and more purple than red. Something in Aegon ached with jealousy at this proof that Selwyn was throwing him aside but keeping Orys. Selwyn was _his _brother, his closest friend, his, his, _his, _no matter that he had bonded with Orys as well. They were _all _his, Selwyn and Orys and Robar. Aegon would not let them go-

"Robar and I agreed to wait long enough to allow you to heal before he breaks your bond," Selwyn said quietly. "I am sorry, Aegon, but there was nothing else we could do – I will not bend the knee to a Valyrian king. It is wrong, my friend. You could have chosen any number of titles and any number of queens and kept our loyalty. Amys as well will never forgive you this, you know – she and Robar and I were the first to plan our exile. She thought you sincere in your wish to marry her."

"I- I was, but the bloodlines-"

"House Manwoody is as old as House Targaryen, almost as old as House Dayne. Why should marrying Amys sully the bloodlines?"

"Selwyn-"

"By your leave, Your Grace," Selwyn broke in, bowing mockingly and striding across the room to the door. He hesitated only a moment and then he was gone.

Gone forever. Aegon had not shed a tear when it became clear that the Freehold would never rise again, but the sight of Selwyn Dayne's back disappearing from his view was enough to make him weep.

He and Balerion left the Eyrie two days later without taking leave of Selwyn or the others who had gathered around him, men and women Aegon wished to name traitors but could not. His arms ached, left with the long vertical score-lines Selwyn had used and right with the cruel, tight spiral Robar had chosen to break their bond. Worse, he felt such grief as he thought might choke him at the thought of losing them, Selwyn and Robar and Amys and Selina and Garold. They stood close together behind Jasper Arryn, watching him with eyes that varied from palest lilac to deepest indigo, hair of every shade of silver and platinum and white-gold imaginable.

He grieved more for them than he did for the Freehold, but even that would not make him give up his crown. He owed it to the memory of House Targaryen to make their name feared once more, to return them to the glory they had revelled in as part of the Council of Nine, as the leaders of the Freehold.

Selwyn was wrong. Aegon was doing right by his ancestors. He would prove it – House Targaryen would outlast any of the rebel Houses fleeing to Dorne.

He would have his vengeance on them when he took Dorne. These Martells could not withstand the might of the dragonlords for long.

* * *

_The Valyrians who go to Dorne are the "mountainy" Dornishmen Tyrion mentions as being pale and all – the Daynes at least sound SUPER Valyrian, what with their silver-blonde hair and violet eyes, so I thought hey, I'm going balls-out AU with this, why not slam some more headcanon in there?_

_So yeah, just thought I'd clear that up._

_Next, we move to Rebellion-era, and then we swing up into the council of war at Harrenhall c. 306 AL. So. Huzzah and all that. Hope you enjoyed : )_


	3. A Rebel and a King

Robert Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and Lord Protector of the Stormlands both for lack of sister, daughter or niece, traced the crowned stag prancing on the breast of his doublet with idle fingers, swearing under his breath when a callous snagged on the rich black velvet or the thread-of-gold. He stared hard at the festivities, if they could be called that for they were sombre indeed for a wedding, but saw little beyond the cup of wine in his hand and the nightmarish visions of kidnap and rape dancing just behind his eyes.

His thoughts were reserved solely for the Lady of Winterfell, not for the wedding of her brother and Lord Protector.

Lyanna had been missing for months now – had been taken from the godswood at Winterfell, near as anyone could tell, and Robert burned with the need to rescue her. Just months before they were due to marry she had been taken from him, stolen away from him and from her family, from her home. When it had become clear that she hadn't simply gone off on one of her jaunts – a fairly regular thing, according to Ned – the entirety of the North seemed to have gone mad, and Robert right along with them.

Said brother and Lord Protector, the man Robert would have preferred as a brother for himself than the two he had (although, given as how Renly had yet to reach his ninth name day, that was probably a little unfair on him), was dancing with his new wife, neither of them quite smiling because neither of them were quite sure how they were supposed to behave. Catelyn Tully was Lady of Riverrun, Ned Lord Protector of the North and, for the moment, heir to Winterfell, and theirs was a wonderful match – or at least, it would have been, had Brandon's ghost not hung heavy over proceedings.

Robert hadn't liked Brandon Stark all that much – Brandon had made it perfectly clear that he thought Robert beneath Lyanna on numerous occasions, had ignored the blatant hypocrisy his disapproving of Robert's wandering eye and reputation for womanising, slut that he had been – but for Ned's sake and Lyanna's, he mourned Brandon's and their father's deaths. Catelyn Tully quite clearly mourned the death of her one-time betrothed, the taller, more handsome, more charming Stark brother. Ned was a better catch, in Robert's opinion, and by far the more likely of the two to remain faithful to her, but it would doubtless take time for Catelyn – Cat – to see that. Ned's charms were his quiet demeanour, his honesty and integrity, the surprising vein of sarcastic humour that was only coaxed out when he was absolutely comfortable in your company, the total and utter devotion he showed to those he loved. Ned Stark was the best man in Westeros, in Robert's opinion, himself most definitely included, and Catelyn Tully was lucky to have him.

As for the younger sister and Jon… Well. Robert had a sneaking suspicion that there would be little love in that marriage. Jon was old enough to be the girl's father, more, and she was a vain, foolish thing without her sister's grace and presence of mind. Ned was definitely getting the prize of House Tully, but at least they were generally fertile stock – Jon had need of an heir, after all. Robert had long suspected that Jon intended adopting Ned and naming him heir to the Eyrie, but the war had changed all of their plans, and so there would be an Arryn on the Weirwood Throne after Jon's day came after all.

Robert excused himself before the bedding ceremony – something he usually relished, but he had too much respect for both Ned and Jon to paw at their new wives. Ned was shy enough about the whole affair, ashamed by what he saw as a betrayal of Brandon's memory, without Robert involving himself. Ned was shy in general, of course, about women and about just about everything, but that was another part of his charm. Robert had always been confident and brash enough for three men, Ned reserved enough for four, and somehow they had balanced one another out, to Jon's eternal relief.

Robert settled himself on the top of the curtain wall and looked down into the Tumblestone, wondering how this all would end. Some of their sources had reported that the King was telling everyone that would listen that the Baratheons were using Lyanna's abduction as an excuse to usurp him, but in all honesty Robert hadn't considered the throne at all when he'd come forward in open rebellion. He only wanted Lyanna back, only wanted to make her his wife. Their daughters would rule from Storm's End and Winterfell, sisters with different names, a deer and a direwolf, and Robert would serve as Lord Protector for both the North and the Stormlands until such a time as their girls married. It _would _happen. He _would _have Lyanna back.

But the throne… If he did end up as King, that would make Lyanna his Queen and leave both of them ineligible to rule their ancestral homelands. Their daughters would be heirs to the Iron Throne – because this Targaryen nonsense of the eldest son inheriting would end – and Winterfell would pass to Ned, Storm's End to Stannis…

And Dragonstone! If Robert did take the throne – an outcome that seemed to become more likely with every passing day, if the whispers were to be believed – then he would have to destroy House Targaryen without mercy, which meant Dragonstone and the Crownlands would be left without a ruler. The Crown Prince had always ruled Dragonstone, so mayhaps his and Lyanna's daughter would do the same…?

He pushed aside such thoughts. Politics were for Jon to worry about – Robert was a warrior, potentially a king, and he would be a husband as soon as Lyanna was returned to him. Of that he would make sure.

* * *

White enamel and red rubies shone on the far side of the water in the glaring sunshine, and Robert knew that golden antlers and silver wolves and trout shone on this side.

The Trident, shallow with the weather that left it too cold to rain, was remarkably still between the two armies. It mirrored the high, pale sun, cast shimmering lights that dazzled many of the men present.

It all came down to this. Months of campaigning, starting as soon as word of Brandon and Rickard Stark's deaths reached the Eyrie, and it all came down to this one final battle. King's Landing would fall if Rhaegar Targaryen did, Robert was sure of it, because no man alive would swear his sword to the Mad King with only the brattish, possibly mad, second son and a babe who might be as mad as his grandsire as hope of relief. Even the Lannisters might step forward and finally enter the fray.

Rhaegar Targaryen himself came forward on his great white charger flanked by two of his father's Kingsguard – Robert didn't understand how Lewyn Martell could stand to be near the bastard, knowing how Rhaegar had dishonoured his wife, Lewyn's niece, no more than he understood why Arthur Dayne, the finest sword in the Seven Kingdoms and, by all reports, Rhaegar's closest friend, was absent – and offered amnesty in return for surrender.

"This war is pointless," he insisted, looking from Robert to Ned to Hoster Tully. "I beg of you, Lord Baratheon – lay down your arms. I will see to it that no harm comes to you for your actions. You have my solemn vow."

"Just as Elia Martell had your solemn vow," Robert snarled. "Tell me, your highness, does your _solemn vow _count for much more than shit now?"

Rhaegar's violet eyes were sorrowful, as though Robert had made some unnecessary insult to his person.

"You leave me no choice, my lord," he said sadly. "It is battle, then."

"Aye," Robert agreed, wheeling Storm around – why he had let Renly name his horse, he'd never know – and turning for his army. "It is."

* * *

Battle was a dance, one Robert relished more than any, one he had been trained in all his life. Oh, he had trained as a ruler as well, once it became clear that his father would sire no daughters, that Storm's End would pass to a son of House Baratheon for the first time since long before the Conquest, but battle, war – that was what a Lord Protector learned, and Robert had never wished to be anything more than a Lord Protector.

Men fell to his hammer again and again, some wearing golden roses or sun-and-spears or three-headed dragons, but they all fell. Breastplates caved, helms smashed, chainmail tore clean through, and both blunt and spiked ends of his hammer glistened with blood. His armour, too, black enamel gleaming with gilded trim, the stag standing proud on his breastplate to match the antlers towering on his helm, was awash with the blood of his enemies.

Not yet with the blood of the dragon, but soon. Robert could almost taste Rhaegar Targaryen's impending doom.

Ned was somewhere nearby, more lethal with Ice than Robert could ever have imagined – he and Ned had trained together since they were little more than boys, had fought with every weapon imaginable, but he'd never seen anything so ferociously deadly as Ned in unadorned grey plate with all that Valyrian steel like a sunrise-washed storm-sky in his hands. Robert couldn't see his friend's face, but he knew that Ned regretted the life of every man that fell to his sword – he was soft like that, although perhaps it wasn't so much a fault as Robert sometimes thought – and would be grimacing as if their pains were his own.

And then, in the middle of the madness, a space opened up, a space that shimmered with rubies, and Robert's blood surged.

Rhaegar was fast – deadly fast – and surprisingly strong, but Robert was bigger, stronger, harder, his armour thicker and more practical, and he gladly took a wound to his left shoulder because it allowed him to swing his right arm around and stove in Rhaegar's fancy dragon-emblazoned breastplate with a single, crushing blow, a blow so powerful that the spike of Robert's hammer almost pierced the prince's back plate as well. Rubies scattered into the water at their feet, redder even than the blood that laced it already, and Robert threw back his head and laughed as Rhaegar choked and died.

"Victory!" he roared, raising his hammer high in one hand and Rhaegar's helm in the other. "Victory!"

* * *

King's Landing was all in crimson and gold when they rode through the gates. Robert wondered at that, wondered why Ned hadn't ordered the Lannister banners taken down as soon as he arrived, but he pushed the thought aside and turned his attention to the cheering rows of smallfolk lining the streets. Everywhere there was joy and delight, and Robert would have been swept up in it had his desperate worry for Lyanna not niggled constantly at the back of his mind.

Ned and Jon stood on either side of the Iron Throne when he strode into the throne room, Tywin Lannister at Jon's side and his son, Jaime, at Ned's. Robert could sense the dislike, the disdain, Ned bore to both Lannisters even from as far away as the doors, but he knew that few others new Ned well enough to truly understand just how deep his dislike must be for it to be so obvious.

"I'm told Mad Aerys fell to your sword," Robert said, turning to Jaime Lannister, the boy they already called the Kingslayer. He nodded, gilded armour bright, and Robert shook his head with a laugh. "Every vow you swore broken – but mayhaps it is forgivable in this case."

Ned and Jon both looked disapproving of that, but Robert would need a Kingsguard and there was no denying that Jaime Lannister was one of the best swordsmen in the realm. More importantly, his and Lyanna's daughters would need a Queensguard, because even the most powerful of Lord Protectors would be hard pressed to fend off every assault on a Queen's person. Robert had studied enough history to be well aware of that.

The throne was every bit as uncomfortable as it looked – hard and unpleasantly threatening under his arse in the strangest way – but the view was incomparable. Line after line of men on bended knee, Tywin bloody Lannister among them. He'd never felt so powerful in all his life, not even when he'd stood over Rhaegar's body on the Trident. This was power, true power – power that his daughter and his granddaughter and so on would wield when his day was done. It was an intoxicating notion.

"Bring them in," the Warden of the West – that his sister had named him over her husband was still a cause of derision for House Frey – called over his shoulder as he rose to his feet, something dark and unpleasant in his pale green eyes. His men came through the doors with crimson-wrapped bundles in their arms, and Robert felt a sick sort of thrill – not of excitement or anticipation, more of apprehension – as the three corpses were laid at his feet. "As a token of my fealty, Your Grace – Rhaegar Targaryen's wife and children."

Ned made a strangled noise in the back of his throat and turned his face away in disgust, grey eyes snapping shut as if to erase the sight of the two too-small bodies on either side of one that was only just big enough. Elia Martell had always been a small woman, frail and a shade unhealthy looking, but that didn't take away from her having been Rhaegar's wife. Unfair though he knew it was, absurd and _wrong _though it was, he couldn't shake the thought that if mayhaps she'd been more, Rhaegar would never have looked to Lyanna. Robert's Lyanna. Lyanna, who was still not at his side – she would be, though. He would drape her in a cloak of black velvet and cloth-of-gold, and he would set a crown on her head, and their daughters would sit the throne when his day was done.

Elia Martell and her children had not been enough for Rhaegar Targaryen

"Dragonspawn," Robert hissed, ignoring Ned's reaction and Jon's as well, his homely face almost green with poorly managed horror. "What of the Queen and the younger one?"

"Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys have fled to Dragonstone, Your Grace," the Kingslayer – the epitaph was remarkably easy to get used to – informed him. "Her Grace is with child, sire," he added hesitantly.

Robert's blood was boiling again, but he had more pertinent concerns than a lesser prince and a dying woman – because it was well known throughout the Seven Kingdoms that Rhaella Targaryen had suffered greatly at her brother-husband's hands – and so he turned away from the subject for the time being.

"What news of Lady Stark?" he demanded, settling as comfortably as he could on the most uncomfortable seat he had ever sat on. "Of the siege at Storm's End?"

"Lya is in Dorne, we know little more," Ned said tiredly, keeping his back resolutely to the bodies on the floor. "As for Storm's End, the Tyrells still hold the siege – you must ride out against them if you plan on keeping both your brothers alive, Robert. They'll be running short on supplies even if you were to leave right this minute."

"Send a message to Mace Tyrell," Robert decided. "Tell him how the land now lies. And send a raven to my brothers – they should know the truth of things before anyone else."

Lyanna in Dorne. Dorne. Did the bastard have no shame, to hide away his stolen woman in his wife's homeland?

"What of the rest of the Kingsguard?" he asked Jaime Lannister. "Lewyn Martell is dead, I saw him fall, but the rest?"

"Ser Barristan Selmy is gravely injured, but he lives," Jaime said catiously. "Ser Arthur, Ser Oswell and Lord Commander Hightower are- they are with Lady Stark, sire. In Dorne. Prince Rhaegar ordered them to protect her-"

"Keep her prisoner, more like," Robert growled. "Ned, find out where Lyanna is and bring her here. I won't have her left to rot in Dorne."

"What of you?" Ned asked, flinching slightly when Lannister men came and gathered up Elia Martell and her children. The floor was dark and damp where they had lain. "While I find Lya?"

Robert leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and grinned.

"I have roses to prune."

* * *

Mace Tyrell, Paxter Redwyne, Randyll Tarly and Leyton Hightower bent the knee on behalf of their wives and daughters with a dissatisfying ease, but Robert contented himself with the knowledge that peace in the Reach and the Stormlands would leave Ned's journey to Dorne that much easier.

He feasted the Reacher lords in Storm's End, Stannis and Renly sitting to his right and left and their bannerwomen stretching out along the table beyond his brothers, leaving the visitors (invaders) to keep the lower tables. It was as great an insult as he could afford if he wished to maintain the peace, and that he wished for more fervently than anything save Lyanna and Ned's safe return.

Later, he brought Stannis into his solar and sat his brother down.

"I need you to take Dragonstone," he said seriously. "It can only be taken by sea, and I don't trust Paxter Redwyne, great admiral or no – I trust you. Take the royal fleet and destroy any resistance. Dragonstone is yours if you succeed."

Which left Storm's End to Renly, of course, which could quite possibly be seen as a poor indictment of Stannis' abilities, but Robert needed someone he could trust close to King's Landing, keeping the Crownlands. Even if he and Stannis had never been close – in truth, they did not like one another at all – Robert trusted his brother above any man save Ned and Jon. Stannis was too rigidly honourable to ever do anything but the right thing.

Stannis nodded sharply and stood up to take down a handful of maps from their bracket high up on the wall – Robert sank into strategizing as easy as falling asleep, somehow managing to ignore that niggling worry for Lyanna that had swelled to encompass Ned, too.

* * *

It was three months before Ned returned from Dorne. Three months in which Ned's son was born, a Tully-looking boy named Robb, according to his grandfather's letter, in which Tywin Lannister brought that daughter of his, Cersei, his sister's heir, from Casterly Rock, in which Jon reluctantly accepted the position of Hand of the King and in which Barristan Selmy recovered and was appointed Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Three months in which Lyanna died and Ned produced a bastard son from somewhere.

Robert had been too stunned by Ned's brief letter – apparently coming from Starfall, of all places, the seat of House bloody Dayne – to do much more than drown his mounting sorrows in as much Arbor red as he could lay hands on and try to ignore the whispers that Ned's lad was Ashara Dayne's son – he couldn't be, could he? Ned and Ashara Dayne? The idea was madness – and that Lyanna had gone willingly with Rhaegar. Regardless of her feelings for Robert, and he was not fool enough to imagine that she had been as besotted by him as he was by her, Lyanna had been a Stark of Winterfell, honourable to her bones, and she would never have gone back on their betrothal just because she liked the look of Rhaegar Targaryen.

Ned was a different man when he rode into King's Landing, only Howland Reed left of the six companions who rode south with him, Ice strapped across his back and a babe with dark Stark hair and grey Stark eyes in his arms, Lyanna's bones with him to be carried all the way home to Winterfell. He seemed years older, weary right down deep, worn and grey in some way that Robert thought he maybe understood. Grief could do that to a man, after all, and Ned had lost more in this war than most.

"She was dying when I got there, Robert," he said, passing the boy off to his wet nurse. "She- I was too late. If the Kingsguard hadn't been there…"

That Ned had killed Arthur Dayne – the Sword of the Morning! – had come as almost as big a surprise as the news that he'd fathered a bastard.

But Lyanna. Strong, wilful, beautiful Lyanna, now nothing more than a box of bones and memories and grief-

All of that pushed aside by the Lannisters' endless crusade for power, by Tywin's having read an insult in Robert naming Jon as his Hand, and Robert abruptly found himself draping black-and-gold around Cersei Lannister's narrow shoulders and setting a diadem of golden antlers in her golden hair before presenting her to the city as their new queen.

He wasn't quite sure how it happened, wasn't quite sure that he liked it, but he knew that he needed a daughter to consolidate his hold on the Seven Kingdoms, and soon. He needed an heir, and for that, unfortunately, he needed a wife.

* * *

Ned's letters were few and far between – Jon apparently received more, and Lysa received one a month from her sister – but it became clear within a pleasingly short time that his marriage to Catelyn Tully was developing into a happy one. They were well matched, in a strange sort of way, both reserved and near as rigid as Stannis in their honour, and Robert had never expected anything but happiness between them. Reading between the lines, he could see that Ned's bastard – Jon, he called him – was the primary bone of contention between them, even though Ned's two sons were apparently thick as thieves.

Robert couldn't say the same of his own marriage – Cersei was a vain, hard woman, far too aware of her beauty and with a wildly inflated opinion of her intelligence. She resented their marriage for removing her from the line of succession to Casterly Rock as much as she loved it for the crown it brought her, and Robert could not help but resent her for not being Lyanna. It didn't help that Cersei seemed determined to wrest what power from him she could, assuming that coming from a House that had bent the knee to its womenfolk for centuries would make him malleable to her manipulations. Not so – he would bend the knee to their daughter, to a woman of Baratheon blood, but not to a Lannister. Never to a Lannister, and Cersei had made it eminently clear that she had no intention of ever being anything other than a Lannister, parading around in crimson and ornamenting everything in rubies and golden lion's heads.

Two years after the war – Robert's Rebellion, they were calling it, although it had been more for Lyanna than for Robert himself, and rebellion had not been his intention when he raised his banners – Cersei swelled with child. Robert found himself unexpectedly excited, almost giddy at the prospect of fatherhood. He had several children dotted about the place – his eldest daughter, Mya, for example – but this would be his first trueborn child, the first child to bear his name. Congratulations poured in from across the realm when word of Cersei's pregnancy spread, congratulations which doubled when word of a golden-haired son reached the seven seats not held by House Baratheon, but only Ned's letter – the personal letter, not the official one in Catelyn's hand bearing congratulations and assurances that the boy, Joffrey, would be a wonderful Lord Protector when the time came – showed any sign of the commiseration and sympathy Robert so desired. He had been so certain that it would be a girl, his girl, with his mother's eyes and his mother's curly black hair, a girl he could call Myrcella for the last Storm Queen, but instead he had one more Lannister to trouble him.

Because the Lannisters were trouble. He knew that without any shadow of a doubt, even without Jon cautioning him to tread carefully and Stannis openly opposing Tywin at every turn. Few enough agreed with his decision to allow the Kingslayer to remain on the Kingsguard, and fewer still saw the reasoning behind it – at least, with him in King's Landing, Robert could keep an eye on him, and having him there seemed to soothe Cersei's quicksilver temper somewhat.

Not six moons later, Ned and Catelyn sent two letters south once more – personal and official – and Ned abdicated Winterfell to his new daughter, Sansa, and Robert felt a desperate stab of jealousy on behalf of the daughters he and Lyanna would never have, who would have held Winterfell if not for Rhaegar fucking Targaryen. Not that he held any anger towards Ned – Ned, who had never wanted anything but peace and quiet, who had ridden to war only because it was his duty as Lord Protector of the North and as Lyanna's brother, who deserved every happiness the gods saw fit to give him simply because he was a good man, the best of men.

Knowing that Ned deserved to be happy did not make Robert's jealousy any easier to bear, of course, but it did enable him to mask it.

* * *

A worse sting came not two years later, when Stannis' daughter was born. There was some muttering that it looked bad for a king so determined to place his daughter on the throne that he could not manage to _sire _a daughter, when the brother who had so little apparent interest in his wife could manage the feat.

With that in mind – Ned with a daughter, Stannis with a daughter, every damned man in the Seven Kingdoms with a daughter save Robert – Robert set about seriously campaigning for a daughter, and despite Cersei's insistence that she would come to him at the times she was most likely to conceive, she conceded to his presence in her bed with less bad grace than she had shown before.

He visited her every night, usually at least mostly sober, and kept his eyes shut tight so he did not have to see that her eyes were not grey, that her hair was not dark and wild, that her skin was not pale and freckled. He had initially hidden his face in the crook of her neck when they laid together, but Cersei even smelled wrong, smelled of warmth and wealth and the Westerlands, whereas Lyanna – the few times he'd been close enough to catch her scent – had smelled of old things, cold things, things foreign to him that he had desperately wanted to discover.

He visited Cersei every night, but in his dreams Lyanna visited him. He took comfort in the knowledge that Cersei had similar dreams of some lover or other, because she slept as restlessly as he did himself, and when he first noticed the marks of another man's hands and mouth on her skin, he decided that she could go to hell next time she called him out for visiting the Street of Silk.

* * *

Balon Greyjoy rebelling came almost as a relief, because it gave him a valid excuse to escape King's Landing and the monthly disappointment when Cersei bled and her stomach stayed stubbornly flat. Robert took his frustrations out on the Ironmen, battering lines through them with his hammer with Ned and Ice at his right and Barristan Selmy at his left. Jon he left in King's Landing – Lysa was with child again, and Jon was beside himself with worry that this would be one more loss to add to their tally – to rule in his stead, and it was with a fierce sort of joy that he watched Balon Greyjoy kneel in his sons' blood and swear fealty once more. His only remaining son, a pretty sort of boy by the name of Theon ("A Stark name," Ned said, sounding surprised) was brought to Winterfell when they turned north for a celebratory feast under Ned's roof.

Ned called the Greyjoy lad his ward, but everyone knew that he was a hostage to his father's good behaviour.

Ned's sons were as different as night and day – Robb reminded Robert of Brandon and of Edmure Tully, bright and eager and always smiling, whereas Jon was just like Ned, as serious and sombre as ever his father had ever been even at five years of age.

Sansa, the Lady of Winterfell, just gone two, was a beauty already, and would doubtless grow to outshine even her mother. Catelyn, for her part, greeted Robert as an old friend, embracing him as best she could with her infant daughter, her heir, nestled against her breast. The girl, Arya, had been born not long before Ned rode southwest to join the fight against the Greyjoys, and she was as Stark as her half-brother.

Robert could already see Lyanna in her, and it broke his heart clean in two.

* * *

Having seen the girl who might have been Lyanna's daughter, he became even more determined to see Cersei birth his own daughter. Now, he came to her chambers every night _entirely _sober to be sure he did his duty – he visited early and left as soon as he could without insulting her to get blind drunk and try not to think on how blonde her hair was – and miraculously, within four moons she was swelling and the entire country was abuzz with prayers and hopes that soon they would have a princess.

Cersei's temper was foul, her tongue sharper even than usual, but Robert couldn't find it in himself to be anything but utterly accepting of her moods because the maesters and midwives agreed that all signs pointed towards her carrying a daughter – that she was carrying high, whatever that meant, and that this pregnancy was affecting her very differently compared to how she had been while carrying Joffrey all indicated that the most basic fact of it had to be different.

So, a daughter. The thought elated and terrified him in equal measure – could he pass on the realm so crippled by Aerys Targaryen's madness and his own inefficiency, brought on by grief in the early days of his reign, in good conscience? Could he bear to see disappointment in eyes of storm-sea blue, in his mother's eyes as they would be made in his daughter's face?

He did not think he could face it, and so he turned to Jon and began actually wondering how it was he was supposed to rule the Seven Kingdoms.

He would do right by his daughter. He had failed Lyanna, but he would do right by his daughter.

* * *

Myrcella Baratheon, the first woman of their House to bear that name in almost three hundred years, was born in the middle of a fearsome storm, which struck Robert as brilliantly appropriate. She was as Baratheon as her brother was Lannister, all oversized blue eyes and a tuft of night-dark hair right on the top of her head, and when Robert held her close and called her his little Storm Queen, she looked up at him with those uncanny eyes and gurgled happily.

Renly, fifteen and growing more like Robert by the day except for their father's green eyes, immediately claimed her as his own – Stannis had made it clear that Renly was a bad influence and would get nowhere near Shireen if he could help it, and Joffrey, even at four, was so horribly brattish that Robert often wondered where on earth he'd gotten that temper from, that Renly understandably wanted nothing to do with his nephew – and was often to be found carting his niece around in the crook of his elbow, chattering to her about horses and swords and the history of House Baratheon and how her father had fought a war against the dragons and won, all for the sake of a lady, and wouldn't she be lucky to have a Lord Protector who loved her that much when she grew up?

Even Stannis was grudgingly approving of Myrcella, commenting that she was very like their mother – high praise indeed from a man who measured every woman he met against the last Lady of Storm's End – and the congratulations and gifts that streamed in from bannerwomen and their lord protectors, friend and foe alike, were enough to sooth even Cersei's wicked temper.

Ned's letter was the finest of all, of course, even though it was characteristically blunt and honest – Ned had even less hold with flowery language than Robert did himself – because it was one of the few messages which he absolutely trusted the sincerity of.

Ned's letter and Renly's idle chatter about Lord Protectors set him thinking, but there were years left for that yet. Years.

* * *

His second son – his last child, because Tommen's birth damaged Cersei so badly that old Pycelle was certain that she would never bear another child – was born just days after Ned and Catelyn's second son, who they called Brandon and was reportedly as Tully as his full-brother and his oldest sister. Tommen had the dark Baratheon hair, but aside from that he was as Lannister as his mother – he already looked like Cersei and the Kingslayer, even with the round pudginess of baby-fat plumping out his rosy cheeks and the faint hint of blue in his wide green eyes.

Joffrey took an instant dislike to Tommen that burned almost as fiercely as his jealousy of Myrcella, and Robert felt a lightning-quick flash of guilt. He knew that it was his own fault that Joff was so put out, of course, considering the attention he lavished on Myrcella compared with the borderline apathy he exhibited towards Joffrey, but even at barely a year old, Myrcella was so easy to love compared to her older brother, who was whiney and petulant and cruel by turns. Already Joff had a reputation as a bully, something Renly and his friends, the Tyrell boys and a handful of the young Stormlords who acted as Lord Protectors for unmarried sisters and widowed mothers among them, worked hard to beat out of him – sometimes literally, to Cersei's ire.

* * *

Myrcella was three the first time she stole his crown clean off his head and ran off with it hanging down over her eyes, blinded by golden antlers and black curls, her giggles echoing around the throne room with his laughter as he chased her.

She was five the first time she wrapped her little hands around the shaft of his hammer, all freckles and bitten-down nails against the sweat-stained, battle-worn black leather, and tried to lift it. She didn't move it an inch – not a hair – but that only made her more determined, and she demanded that he bring her to the armoury every morning until she was strong enough to move it, even if she couldn't ever lift it.

Her septa intervened both times, but the boldness she displayed then and a hundred other times made Robert's heart swell with pride.

Tommen was shyer, following in Myrcella's shadow, and as cheerfully lazy as she was boundlessly energetic – he somehow managed to talk his way out of doing anything at all with a smile and a sweet word, but even with the way he constantly dodged his duties, he quickly became the obvious heir to the Kingslayer's skill with a blade.

In some ways, Myrcella and Tommen reminded him oddly of himself and Ned growing up in the Eyrie – her as brash and forceful and _wild _as he'd been himself, Tommen trying and failing to act as a voice of reason, just as Ned always had. The Targaryens had always talked about the blood of the dragon, the Starks of being wolf-blooded, but the Baratheons had storms surging in their veins, and Myrcella was living proof of that.

Joffrey, Robert knew, watched his sister and brother and seethed in jealousy.

* * *

Around the same time as Myrcella made it her life's goal to lift his hammer, Robert received a pair of letters from Winterfell announcing the birth of Ned's fourth son, another red-head who they were apparently calling Rickon. Myrcella began demanding that they be allowed go north to visit Lord Ned and Lady Cat and their family – he wondered what Ned would say to Myrcella calling him Ned, even though she'd never so much as laid eyes on him, and he also wondered if he should learn to say no to more of her demands – but was appeased by the reasoning that she had too much to learn about being a queen to travel all the way to Winterfell just to visit.

"Not just a queen, Papa," she told him earnestly, sitting on his lap on the Iron Throne and smiling up at him with those eyes so like his own. "A _storm _queen."

* * *

Robert would only ever reluctantly admit that it was the Kingslayer who managed to convince Myrcella that a Queen did not need to learn to fight with a warhammer, even a Storm Queen.

It was Renly who convinced her that she didn't need to learn how to fight with a sword, either, but there wasn't a single person in King's Landing who could manage to convince her that learning to shoot was unnecessary, especially when she pointed out that she could hunt safely from horseback if she could shoot well, and if she was to be a proper Baratheon she _had _to be able to hunt, because otherwise she wouldn't be able to conquer the stags of Storm's End the way Baratheon women had for years – that was one of the first times Robert cursed Renly for cramming her head full of every titbit of history that was to be found in the library at Storm's End, but it worked in getting Myrcella's way, and he couldn't be angry when she was so radiantly happy.

It was terrifying to be outdone by a six year old, though.

* * *

Myrcella and Tommen were any parent's dream, charging about the Keep on Renly's heels, giggling in the library with the Imp, hanging out of old Barristan Selmy and demanding stories of his heroics, closer than twins and more cheerful than any other children Robert had ever known – from Ned's letters, his own children were just as happy, particularly Robb and Sansa, the eldest two trueborn – and the only people who could wring so much as a smile from Jon's horrible little son Robert, who was called Sweetrobin by his mother and her women.

Joffrey, though, was a menace – his cruelty seemed to blossom with age, and by the time he reached his tenth year, Robert could hardly bear to look at him. Robert had never pretended to be a good man, had always readily admitted to enjoying warfare perhaps more than he should have, but he had never, ever taken pleasure in the pain of another as Joff seemed to.

Cersei was the only one the boy would listen to, but of course she was blind to his flaws – she dressed him up in crimson and gold, stitched his clothes with lions, and generally made a fool of him by pretending that he was a Lannister. Robert could only be relieved that he had managed to convince Myrcella's maids and Tommen's man that they, at least, should be dressed as proper Baratheons, black-and-gold and stags, which seemed to irritate Cersei as much as Joffrey parading around in Lannister colours bothered Robert.

* * *

Cersei's considerable fury was roused spectacularly when her uncle Kevan fathered a daughter, Janei, and the girl was named Genna Lannister's heir – heir to Casterly Rock. Even when Cersei had been forced to abdicate her rights to the Rock when she married Robert, she had held out hope that none of her uncles would leave behind a daughter – she never did consider Gerion's bastard – and so, when Robert died, she would be able to set aside her crown and return triumphant as Lady of the Rock, head of House Lannister. Doubtless she would try to convince Myrcella to release the Kingslayer from his vows to the Kingsguard so that he might be Lord Protector of the Westerlands, too, but Janei Lannister's birth reduced all of Cersei's hopes to so much pigswill and set her into such a series of tantrums that Robert sat by with Myrcella and Tommen and laughed outright at her shameful displays.

Joffrey, of course, had shared his mother's hopes, because if she was to take Casterly Rock he would have gone west with her as her heir. He hated Storm's End as much as Tommen hated Casterly Rock, hated being Renly's heir by dint of a severe lack of daughters on Renly's part, hated everything about being a Baratheon.

Most of all, Robert supposed, Joffrey hated not being heir to the throne, but what could he expect? House Baratheon had been in the hands of its women for centuries, just as every sensible House in Westeros had always been (the Dornish were a queer bunch, and Robert had always considered the Targaryens and Arryns and those lesser Houses who inherited through the male line as a sort of bewildering oddity), so how could Joffrey expect anything else?

* * *

When Ned's eldest boy and his bastard turned twelve – round about the same time Joffrey turned ten and became entirely insufferable – Robert suggested that Ned send one or both of them to King's Landing to be fostered. Catelyn intervened, apparently thinking that Cersei would see it as an insult for the bastard to come into her home – in hindsight, Robert had to admit that she had the right of it – and so it was that Ned and his Sansa came south to leave young Robb in Robert's care.

Sansa was prettier even than Robert had expected, the perfect little Lady of Winterfell, all Tully-blue eyes and flaming red hair and pretty pink blushes fitting for a girl of nine years when he smiled and complimented her, and Ned seemed proud to bursting of his lovely girl and his handsome boy – Robb was as Tully as Sansa, as Cat, and had apparently very recently hit a growth spurt, because he seemed all limbs and cheekbones and eyes when Ned presented him.

Joffrey, of course, hated Robb Stark from the off, but Tommen took to following Robb around wide-eyed with a boyish sort of admiration, just as Myrcella had shyly – shy! Myrcella! – sat at Sansa's side at every meal during her and Ned's regretfully short stay in the city and listened carefully to everything the older girl said.

It had taken a very convoluted and mind-bendingly circumspect conversation to reassure Myrcella that she did not need to behave the same as Sansa Stark, that she was a Baratheon, not a Stark, that she would be a magnificent queen even without the perfect manners the Lady of Winterfell already showed at every turn. Myrcella was generally unimpressed by anything, but the Starks had always been an impressive family.

* * *

Of course, having a Stark at court meant that the other Houses began clamouring for their lads and second daughters to spend time in the city, and so there was a sudden flood of young lords and ladies into the Red Keep, companions for the princess and princes officially but in reality potential wives and lord protectors for the children of House Baratheon.

Myrcella blatantly disregarded every boy who chased her, wise enough even as a little girl to know better than to believe every word of praise and adoration tossed her way – Lannister cynicism put to good use – and Joffrey was quick to gather a circle of admiring young women and like-minded little wretches around himself. Tommen seemed to enjoy simply having more boys of his age about the place to keep him company when Myrcella and Renly were busy.

Robert all but laughed at every letter he received from a fellow parent hedging a vague enquiry as to whether or not he had given any consideration to the subject of who Princess Myrcella's Lord Protector would be when she took the throne, and wouldn't it be best to foster ties between the Iron Throne and this House or that.

More often than not, he was sorely tempted to write back and say that no, no, it wouldn't be best to foster ties between the throne and that piddly little House from the backarse of the Westerlands, because he, Robert of House Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms, Lord Protector of the Realm, had plans for his daughter, plans that involved moving her away from Lannister influence as best he bloody well could.

* * *

Ned's bastard came south for a time after he was knighted at fifteen – he'd been fostered with the Manderlys of White Harbour from he was twelve, from around the same time as Robb had come south to be fostered in King's Landing, it seemed, a compromise Ned and Cat had reached to make up for Ned raising the boy with his trueborn children at Winterfell - and was absolutely wicked with a greatsword, just as Ned was when he bothered to stop being absurdly modest and self-effacing about the whole thing. He and young Robb soon had Tommen hammering away in the practice yard every morning, a feat Robert had never been able to achieve, not even with Renly and the Kingslayer's added encouragement.

Jon, the lad was called, and he was just like Ned, quiet and reserved except in certain company – Robb's, generally, although he seemed to get along well enough with Jon Arryn as well, and was one of the few people Stannis didn't seem to openly despise, which was a fair achievement indeed, because Stannis despised everyone but his daughter, his Onion Knight, Jon Arryn, and, sometimes, Renly and Myrcella.

* * *

When Myrcella was ten, Margaery Tyrell, Lady of Highgarden, came to court.

The Tyrell girl was of an age with Ned's boys, nearly six-and-ten by then and fully aware of how pretty she was, all chestnut curls and wide doe eyes that Robert didn't believe for an instant. Still, Myrcella seemed fond enough of her, and she was truly gifted at keeping Myrcella away from Cersei, but it was the effect she had on Jon Snow that was the most amusing part of her presence at court.

The poor lad seemed incapable of walking into a room that she was in without blushing, incapable of speaking to her without stumbling over his words – Robert had seen Ned in a similar situation a hundred times over, fumbling so much with a pretty girl that she got bored and moved on – and prompting him to all but hide behind young Robb to try and keep everyone from noticing how red his cheeks were above his beard.

Margaery Tyrell seemed to delight in teasing Jon, though, and soon enough she and Myrcella were making a game of it, walking around arm in arm, the best of friends despite the differences in their ages, giggling behind their hands when any of the young men they deigned to smile at reacted to their presence.

Margaery stayed for several months before returning to Highgarden, but she began paying more frequent visits to King's Landing, and hardly a week went by but Myrcella received a letter sealed with a rose and smelling of flowers to match the ones sealed with a direwolf that had been coming south since Robb came to foster at King's Landing.

It made Robert glad to see Myrcella friends with her bannerwomen – she could hopefully rely on the support of Dragonstone, Storm's End, Casterly Rock, Highgarden, Winterfell and the Eyrie in the event of a rebellion against her, provided Joffrey didn't pull some idiocy and set some of her allies against her, and even if the Martells and the Greyjoys combined forces – a laughable idea – they could not stand against so much of the realm.

* * *

Tommen was sad to see Ned's lad go, but Jon promised to visit soon – a promise he was forced to break when his sister managed to convince him to swear himself as her sworn shield not days after his arrival at Winterfell, if Ned's letters were to be believed. Somehow, that news spurred Tommen into practicing even harder with his sword, insisting that Myrcella would need a sworn shield until she found a lord protector and he'd be damned if anyone else was allowed to be his sister's guard.

The Kingslayer japed that mayhaps Tommen should work towards joining the Kingsguard, and seemed surprised when Tommen didn't laugh with him at the idea.

It did seem slightly laughable, Robert had to admit, because for all Tommen's skill with a blade he was a soft lad at the back of it, preferring to spend his days sitting in the gardens with a couple of his friends and his vast collection of cats to hunting or riding with the majority of the lordlings scattered about court.

The younger of Ned's girls, Arya, the one who looked like Lyanna, was staying in Riverrun with her grandfather and her uncle, Cat's father and brother. Arya would be taking the Tully name and colours when she came of age, and Ned and Cat had agreed that it would be best for her to live in the Riverlands so as to understand the people she would one day govern. Robert liked that she was so close because it meant that she and Myrcella could visit without too much inconvenience – young Robb was always willing to go along to see his kin, and Myrcella seemed to enjoy Arya Tully's company, half-wildling though she was.

Then again, Robert had a sneaking suspicion that had he been even a touch more lenient when Myrcella was smaller, he'd have a similar problem on his hands, and he thanked the gods for septas and Renly.

* * *

It was not until around Myrcella's twelfth birthday, when whispers of dragons and Targaryens across the Narrow Sea became solid reports backed up by people fleeing the lands beyond the Free Cities for fear of what Mad Aerys' daughter would do to any who stood against her, that Robert began to worry in earnest. He had been working for years to eradicate the threat, but the last Targaryens seemed to have the Stranger's own luck when it came to evading the killers he sent after them. It turned his stomach to think that there were still dragonspawn running loose in the world, but there seemed nothing he could actually _do _about it.

He knew that there was no chance that he would survive a Targaryen landing in Westeros, no chance that any Baratheon or Lannister or Stark or Arryn or Tully would survive, but he would be a liar if he said that he would allow any harm to come to Myrcella while he still lived.

With that in mind, he began making discreet enquiries – using neither Varys nor Littlefinger, trusting neither man with Myrcella's life and safety because there were few enough who had proved their loyalty to the point where he would trust them with Myrcella, and neither Varys nor Littlefinger had truly done so – as to how he might go about saving his daughter from the wrath of the Targaryens.

Robb Stark proved an unbelievably useful ally, as moon-eyed for Myrcella as she was for him and just as eager to preserve her safety as Robert was, potentially more so. Of course, neither Robb nor Myrcella seemed aware that Robert knew that they were all but chasing one another, which proved useful as well – if Myrcella didn't know that he was using young Robb as a tool to preserve her, then she wouldn't stop spending every minute she could sneak in his company, and if young Robb didn't have cause to be afraid of his sweetheart's father because he thought said father didn't know who his sweetheart was, well, all the better. He was more useful that way.

Myrcella disapproved of assassins, refused to entertain the notion of buying the services of a Faceless Man even when the small council less Barristan Selmy pointed out the danger presented by Daenerys Targaryen's continued existence, but Robb supported the idea of it wholeheartedly with the good sense to see that it was the best chance they had of killing the horselord's whore before she might turn her attentions to Westeros – the only problem being that the inordinate cost of a Faceless Man meant that the crown could not foot the bill without depleting the treasury to an unmanageable extent, and Jon had refused to allow Littlefinger to approach the Iron Bank even once more.

Which left only Genna Lannister as a source of gold.

Which meant including the Lannisters in his plans.

And so the Faceless Men were set aside, and a Sorrowful Man hired instead, but he failed – failed miserably – and Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, survived to fight another day.

None had managed to stand against Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives during the Conquest.

By the time Myrcella turned fourteen and Daenerys Targaryen had crowned herself Queen of those cesspits around Slaver's Bay, Robert had decided that regardless of how hopeless it seemed to be, he would lead the Seven Kingdoms out in Myrcella's defence.

He would abdicate his crown on her sixteenth birthday, as always intended, but he would remain as her Lord Protector until she and young Robb stopped playing the fool and talked to Sansa Stark. Perhaps even after that – he _would _see Myrcella survive this, and he _would _see her sit the Iron Throne.

He had failed Lyanna, but he would do right by his daughter.


	4. The First Day At Harrenhall

"Well, girl – what do you think?"

Robert reined his horse in beside Myrcella's, watching her face as she took in the sight of Harrenhall with the sun rising behind the Wailing Tower.

"It's terribly ugly," she said with a shrug. "I've always wondered why nobody ever thought to raze it to the ground and build afresh – although I suppose it _is _useful to have somewhere large enough to host an event such as this. At least they had the good sense to raise the banners before we arrived – they couldn't manage that in Darry or Lord bloody Harroway's Town."

"Temper, temper," Tommen teased from the other side of her, grinning when she stuck out her tongue at him. "Come now, sweet sister – surely you can find some poetry in your soul for the greatest and most terrible castle in your realm?"

"I will leave the poetry to you, little brother, and pray that it does not involve cats," she sniped back. Her smile took any venom from her words, as did the affectionate wrinkle of her nose. "Come, let us strike awe into the hearts of our assembled people – mayhaps we'll even find a wife for you, Tommen."

He snorted in amusement, ducking away from her attempt to slap his shoulder, and shook his head.

"Don't say such terrible things, Cella," he said, affecting an air of horror that set Myrcella off in peals of laughter. "I have years of wenching ahead of me yet!"

Robert stayed on the top of the hill for a moment, watching Myrcella and Tommen gallop towards Harrenhall with the Kingslayer and Arys Oakheart on their heels, and then sighed. Their lives had been so uncomplicated until now, and he was loathe to launch them into a new war, but he knew that he had no choice. The dragons were coming, and they had to be ready to face them.

With every mile of ground Daenerys Targaryen laid claim to that brought her closer to Westeros – she seemed to be travelling by land from Slaver's Bay, making her way along the roads that were all that existed of the old Valyrian Freehold built by her ancestors, making first for Old Valyria – the danger to Myrcella's life, to Tommen's (and even Joffrey's) became greater.

Robert had lost his parents to storms, something that every man, woman and child who lived on Shipbreaker Bay accepted as a very real possibility. He had lost his brothers – Stannis, at least – to distance and differences in character. He had no control over such things, but he had lost Lyanna to a Targaryen, something he might have conquered before her death had he moved quicker, and he had no intention of losing Myrcella to Rhaegar's sister.

* * *

"I still find it difficult to believe that Joff refused to come," Tommen chuckled. "What I wouldn't give to have seen _that _argument."

"I do hope Renly hit him," Myrcella agreed, rolling her eyes at Tommen's disapproving tut. "Oh, shut up, Tommen – you wish it as much as I do. How else do you expect Renly got him to come along without having to tie him to a horse?"

"I'd rather hit Joff myself, but I suppose his continued surprise when Renly beats him silly on the practice yard will suffice for now."

"You'll be facing him on the practice yard yourself for the first time since he left for Storm's End soon," Myrcella said thoughtfully. "Do try not to actually kill him, won't you?"

"And deprive Uncle Renly of Joffrey's company? I could never do such a terrible thing!"

Tommen maintained a troubled silence for a moment and then turned to look at her once more.

"I suppose Mother will insist we spend time with Joff, won't she?" he said, abruptly, and uncharacteristically seriously, too. Unflappable though her little brother usually was, Myrcella knew that Joffrey was one of the few things that truly worried Tommen – years of bullying before Father had eventually succeeded in packing their older brother off to Storm's End had made certain of that. Myrcella often wished that she and Tommen could have had an older brother more like Jon Snow, who was a better man than most for all that people whispered of bastards and their sinful natures.

Robb Stark was also an excellent older brother, but Myrcella found it difficult to think of him as such. She was no Targaryen, after all, despite the Targaryen grandmother Father had claimed as legitimisation of his claim to the throne following the Rebellion.

"And Grandfather and Aunt Genna, too. Damn it all – I'd rather squire for Uncle Stannis than eat dinner with Grandfather."

"He's a fright," Myrcella agreed, shuddering at the memory of their grandfather's last visit to King's Landing and the hellish experience that had been dining with him, their mother and their uncles. He actively disapproved of Myrcella, openly calling her brattish and coarse, and thought Tommen should have been squired off somewhere in the Westerlands years ago – never mind that he was squiring with Barristan Selmy, the finest knight in the realm, as per Myrcella's personal request to the old man. Grandfather was of the very vocal opinion that Tommen was too soft because he had been allowed stay in King's Landing, close to Father and to Myrcella, but Myrcella was of the slightly less vocal but more sharply worded opinion that her grandfather should keep his nose out of the crown's business and look after his sister's lands as was his duty as Lord Protector of the Westerlands and Warden of the West.

"And he despises us," Tommen said, rallying with a cheerful grin. "What fun. I do love it when people hate us."

"It's well enough for you, little brother – at least you can laugh it off. You're only third in line for the throne, whereas I am heir and should at least have some measure of respect shown me to my face, even if they laugh at me behind my back."

"Oh, stop fretting," Tommen said, waving her concerns away airily. "I'll slaughter any man who insults you to your face, and if they insult you behind your back, I'll have them poisoned."

"Poison is a woman's weapon," Myrcella pointed out piously, covering her hand with her mouth to hide her smile. "Surely a man who hopes to become a knight of the Queensguard would never resort to such dishonourable means?"

Tommen grinned and kicked Thunder into a gallop, shouting back over his shoulder just exactly what he thought of her notions of honour, and Myrcella was torn between being scandalised and tumbling out of her saddle with laughter.

* * *

The crowned stag, black on gold, hung above the main gate. It dwarfed the other banners that hung from the walls, twice as big as the next largest and shimmering in the bright sunshine.

"You'd think a Baratheon held Harrenhall," Tommen murmured while he and Myrcella waited for Father and the rest to catch them up. "Gods, it's vast, isn't it?"

"The banner or the keep?"

"Both, I suppose – I wonder how Grandfather feels about the Lannister lion being shoved over two away from the royal banner?"

With Jon Arryn as Hand of the King, the Arryn falcon flew beside the Baratheon stag to the right, with the Whent banners to the left as was their right as hosts. Only beyond the falcon did the crimson and gold of House Lannister fly, a place of honour for the Queen's family.

"When I am Queen," Myrcella said softly, so softly that not even Jaime and Arys nearby would hear, "the direwolf of House Stark shall fly beside the Hand's banner at gatherings such as this."

Tommen grinned and reached over to pat her hand.

"You intend to speak with Lady Stark, then?"

"Of course!" she said, surprised that he needed to ask. "I might have spoken to her about it sooner, but I thought it rather too important for a letter. Sansa will say yes, I know she will."

"And what banner shall fly at the Queen's right hand?" Tommen asked more loudly, glancing back at Jaime. "I can't imagine you'll want Sweetrobin as your Hand, sister. Mayhaps I won't join the Queensguard and you can name me your Hand and give me a little seat of my own somewhere – I'll have a crimson stag on a golden field to keep Mother happy, and I shall take a pretty wife and raise lazy little sods who will drive everyone to despair with their general ineptitude, just like me. Won't that be nice?"

She laughed at that, partially because Tommen's complete lack of interest in the running of the realm would make him a deplorable Hand, partially because he was so lackadaisical about the prospect of marriage that to picture him with a wife and children was nigh on impossible, and they were both laughing when Father reached them.

"Good, good," he huffed, reaching out to absentmindedly pat Myrcella's head and Tommen's shoulder as he rode past – as King, he had to lead their party through the gates, Myrcella and Tommen behind him and the Kingsguard arrayed all around. By rights, Mother should have been riding with them as well, but she had refused outright to forsake her wheelhouse. She detested riding as much as Tommen hated beets, which was to say she had no tolerance for it at all.

Myrcella adjusted her hair – Father had meant the gesture affectionately, but it had done little for her already messy arrangement of braids.

"I think Uncle Stannis would make a decent Hand," she said to Tommen, riding so close their knees were almost touching just so none would be able to listen to their conversation. "And Margaery is always highly complementary of her brother, the eldest one – Willas, do you remember him? He hasn't been to court in _years._"

"I believe so," Tommen said, looking around him with wide eyes. Myrcella was always jealous of Tommen's eyes, such a pretty blue-green colour. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she had proper Baratheon eyes, like her father and her never-seen grandmother, a deep bright blue like the waters of Shipbreaker Bay just off Storm's End. "I dare say the Tyrells will take to the yard – it's been a good long while since last I saw Loras fight. Do you think Father might organise a joust?"

Tommen was an enthusiastic but appalling tourney knight, lethal though he undoubtedly was with a sword – Myrcella couldn't remember ever seeing him victorious in a joust, but he persisted with his usual laughing goodwill.

"Mayhaps," she hedged evasively, nudging her heels into her horse's sides. She couldn't help but think of all the stories that were told only in whispers in the Red Keep, stories of the last grand meeting at Harrenhall and the tourney that had started a war. "Although that is a poor way to choose a Hand – Uncle Jaime has won dozens of tourneys, but can you imagine him on the small council?"

"A nightmare indeed, Princess," Jaime agreed with a grin near identical to Tommen's. "The realm would collapse within a moon's turn."

* * *

Cersei Lannister, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms for just less than one more year, was a woman Myrcella admired before all others and pitied above any.

Her greatest unacknowledged fear was to be so unhappy in her marriage as her mother was, although Myrcella had never understood precisely what it was that made Mother so unhappy – her daughter would be Queen, her eldest son a lord in his own right as so few were, and she had the finest man in the Seven Kingdoms as her husband.

Myrcella was fiercely proud of her father, a man so proud and so inherently broken and yet so strong. She could not comprehend how her mother could hate him so. If nothing else, he was handsome enough to make up for any gruffness (or lingering ghosts with grey eyes), and he always made certain that Mother never lacked for anything, be it the crimson silks she so adored or the Dornish strongwine she had so recently taken a liking to. He treated Mother better than any man who was lord in his own right might, better than many a king had treated his wife – if the Targaryens were to be taken as an example, in any case – and so it made no sense that Mother detested him quite so intensely.

"Your hair is an embarrassment," Mother snapped, pushing Myrcella down in front of her vanity with hard hands. "Where is your lady's maid? I know you brought at least one-"

"Mother, please – Elisa is gone to collect my things from the wagons. She will be here presently. Go, greet Grandfather – I know you have missed him. And Joff is probably here, too – mayhaps you should see him?"

Mother's expression never changed, but her face pulled tight at the edges and Myrcella knew that she was furiously angry.

"Very well," she said sharply. "By your leave, your highness."

"Mother-"

Mother's attempt at slamming the door was foiled by Elisa's appearance with a small army of men carrying Myrcella's trunks, and Myrcella settled back for the briefest primping session she could coax Elisa into with the sure knowledge that her mother would not speak to her without dire need for at least four days.

* * *

The chamber Lady Whent had appointed for the council meeting was as much too big as everything else at Harrenhall, but Myrcella had never let a little thing like imposing architecture worry her. She strode calmly into the hall with her arm linked through Father's, Tommen at her other side with a plain circlet of gold tucked into his untidy hair, her shoulders back and her head high, and the chatter quieted as they made their way to the head of the table.

Jon and Sweetrobin Arryn were already in their places to the right of Robert and Myrcella's seats, and someone – Myrcella could see her grandfather's godsforsaken pride in it and the fear inherent that came with the mention of Tywin Lannister's name – had arranged for her grandaunt Genna, Lady of Casterly Rock, to sit at their left. By rights, the Starks should have been sitting to Father's left, because theirs was the largest domain in the realm, the Tyrells beyond the Arryns and then Renly beyond the Starks, but as per usual, Grandfather and Aunt Genna had stuck their noses in where they were not wanted and bullied someone into submission. Myrcella would have to find some way to apologise to poor Lady Whent.

"What nonsense is this of the Lannister banners hanging so far from the Baratheon?" Genna asked without preamble, loud enough for every ear in the chamber to hear. Father swelled as if to shout her down – no mean feat, for Genna was an enormous woman with a voice and temper to match, but if anyone could do it, it would be Robert Baratheon – but Myrcella quieted him with a soft hand on his wrist.

"House Lannister thinks too highly of itself," she said, tone remarkably restrained given how bloody angry she was with Genna. "My mother's name is Cersei _Baratheon _now, Lady Lannister. House Lannister has supplied neither Hand of the King nor venue for our council – why should they have the honour of hanging their banners beside the royal colours? Lord Arryn is the King's Hand, Lady Whent our hostess. House Lannister is as honoured as House Tully, who are, after all, Paramount of the Trident and liege of House Whent. How can you complain over something that makes such clear sense?"

Grandfather, standing at Genna's shoulder as her Lord Protector, frowned just slightly – an enormous amount of expression on his hard face. Myrcella could feel Father's arm tense under her hand once more when he saw Grandfather's face shift, but she squeezed his forearm and shook her head minutely.

"Come, let us convene our council," Father said roughly, waving a hand in a gesture equal parts placating and dismissive. Genna and Grandfather stiffened as if struck, but Myrcella could feel Tommen trembling with the effort of not laughing, could see Margaery Tyrell's smirk and Renly's grin further down the table. "We have been delayed long enough by the foul weather."

And so the council sat for the first time.

* * *

"Well, that was an enormous waste of everyone's time."

Myrcella leaned her head against his arm with a theatrical sigh, and Robert had to stop himself from patting her head in reassurance. She had been shushed and told to quiet down every time she opened her mouth, and not only by Genna and Tywin Lannister.

"I would not go so far as that," he said reasonably – Ned and Jon would never have believed it: Robert Baratheon, the voice of reason!

"Oh, bugger that, Father! How in the world are they going to bend the knee to me in six moons' time if they can't bloody well let me speak now? I swear by all the Seven, Father, they'll have you convinced not to abdicate by the end of the week!"

"I gave you my word on that, didn't I?" he pointed out, patting the hand she had tucked into his elbow. "Have I ever broken my word to you before?"

Her mouth twisted, but she shook her head sharply.

"I apologise, Father," she sighed. "It is just… I do hate Aunt Genna so! She treats me like a _child! _I am heir to the Iron Throne, and she behaves as though she can- she can order me about like a servant! I will not stand for it, or for the way Balon bloody Greyjoy looked down his nose at me! How _dare _he? A failed rebel with nothing but a cluster of foul rocks in the Sunset Sea to his name, condescending to his future Queen? Does he think that just because he is Lord and Lord Protector of the Iron Islands both that he is something approaching my _equal? _Why you did not order him to abdicate to Asha as soon as the rebellion was quashed I will never know."

"Which shows how little you know of the Ironmen, girl."

"Oh, but he was _awful. _I suppose she was little better. Asha bloody Greyjoy, first daughter of her House in four generations, the smuggest-"

"At least Stannis seems to have realised that you are near of age, sweetling."

She sniffed.

"That is something, I suppose," she admitted. "And Renly was wonderful, wasn't he? Lady Tully and Sansa as well, and Margaery, of course, although I think Prince Oberyn and Princess Arianne hate me. Damn Grandfather anyways! My Lannister blood will haunt my reign!"

Robert didn't mention that her Baratheon blood would be almost as great a hindrance as her Lannister blood with the Martells. She was in foul enough humour as it stood without him demeaning their House, of which she was so brazenly proud.

"Lord Jon must be exhausted, trying to control both Prince Oberyn's temper and bloody awful Sweetrobin," she groused, kicking the door of his solar shut behind her. "Gods damn them all for being difficult, Father – why can't they just bloody well do as they're told?"

"Language," he warned her. It wouldn't do for her mother to hear her cursing like that. Cersei had a tongue that could melt plate steel when she wanted, but woe betide Myrcella or the boys if she heard them curse even the once. "You can't expect them all to simply muster their levies and leaving them ready for a trio of dragons or the Golden Company to bear down on them, girl – we need to plan. That's why we called a council of war, remember?"

Myrcella threw herself down into one of the enormous armchairs lined in black velvet that sat on either side of the fireplace with a petulant sigh. It was not at all like her to be in anything but reasonably cheerful humour, so the disrespect shown to her at the council must have truly hurt her. Robert's temper rose to a quick simmer – disrespect and insults to himself he brushed aside as if they were nothing, knowing as he did that most of the time they were justified and well earned, but he would suffer no such nonsense to Myrcella. She may have to live with the shadow of Usurpers and Kingslayers on her reign, but he would do his damndest to ensure that her own light far outshone those shadows. She deserved nothing less.

"I know," she sighed, tugging off her narrow circlet of golden filigree and tossing it idly down onto the hearth – that Lannister disregard for gold amused him in private, although he was fairly certain he'd trained it out of her in public, because people disapproved of her appearing too Lannister – before setting her fingers to her temples. "I know that, Father, but truly, it is _maddening _how little true respect some of them showed me today." She hesitated a moment before looking up at him. "Do you think perhaps I should organise a small dinner of my own later in the week? Just the lords and ladies and heirs, mayhaps? Tonight will be a mess."

"Tonight" being the welcoming feast, the greatest hosted in Harrenhall since that godsforsaken tourney during the Year of the False Spring, something Myrcella was apprehensive beyond all reason about. She never drank wine and so had no fear of falling down drunk, she was an excellent dancer and had a natural gift for charm, not unlike Renly – or the Kingslayer, if he weren't such a smug bastard – and so she would, in all likelihood, have most of their guests eating out of the palm of her hand before the music was even started.

Thinking of the Kingslayer reminded Robert of the presence of the two Kingsguard standing in the corners. Barristan Selmy was the epitome of cool serenity, blue eyes looking at nothing and seeing everything, but Arys Oakheart was watching Myrcella with heavy concern written in every line of his frown – then again, he generally did seem deeply concerned about her. He more than anyone save mayhaps young Robb and Tommen seemed to understand Robert's near-paralysing fear of Myrcella's utter disregard for her own safety.

"I need to bathe," Myrcella announced, bounding to her feet and settling her circlet back on her head. It sat at a comically skewed angle, but her rooms were close enough that the chances of any seeing her so disarrayed were slim. "Till later, Father," she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek as she glided by, the dark blue skirts of her gown swirling around her feet.

Oakheart followed her out with an indulgent smile at her back and a helpless shrug to Robert.

* * *

Myrcella winced as Elisa planted her foot in the small of her back and pulled her stays still tighter.

"'Lisa, can't _breathe-"_

"Breathing is not important," Elisa said, her voice rolling over the words, her Volantine accent lending a musicality to the Common Tongue that Myrcella envied. "You are annoyed with how your people behaved today, yes? Well then, you will look more beautiful than any of them, that flame-haired Northern girl included, and you will need as much bosom as you can to distract the menfolk and make them do your bidding. You Westerosi are too stuffy. A woman uses every weapon she has in Volantis, even those she would rather not. You have a magnificent bosom for any woman, much less one of your age, and well that you should use it to your advantage with someone other than your Northman."

Myrcella grimaced, genuinely unable to properly fill her lungs, and gripped harder to the bedpost as Elisa gave the laces another tug.

"I think you've broken one of my ribs," she said reproachfully, shrugging into her robe before sitting at her dressing table just to be sure that she actually _could _sit_. _Elisa was quick to follow her and begin twisting her hair up behind golden pins to hold her crown – not the flimsy circlet of filigree she'd worn at council, but her ceremonial diadem of intricate gold antlers, smaller and less elaborate than her father's but unmistakable for all that – in place.

"It is lucky you have your father's hair," Elisa said lightly, pulling pin after pin from the seemingly bottomless pockets stitched into her skirts. "It does look lovely against your colours."

"It is one of them, Elisa," Myrcella pointed out dryly. "Baratheon black and Baratheon gold?"

"Hush now, Princess," Elisa chastised with a smile. "You let Elisa fix your hair, then we will lace you into your gown and fix your jewels, and not a lady in that hall of many hearths will come close to your beauty."

Myrcella smiled grimly and looked at the reflection of her gown in the mirror. Even without Elisa's agonising work with the stays, that gown and the heavy cloak to go with it would have ensured that every man, woman and child in the hall was focused on Myrcella. They had begun work on it with a team of seamstresses as soon as her father had so much as suggested the idea of a council of war solely for the purpose of reminding the people who Myrcella had just _known _would forget that she was to be their Queen just who exactly she was.

None would _dare _stand against a Storm Queen. Not one single person.

"I do hope you're decent, Cella, because I'm coming in regardless!" Tommen shouted from the other side of the door, pushing it open and coming in with his hands over his eyes. "Are you decent? Do say yes – I'll walk into something if I have to keep my eyes covered."

"I'm decent- ow! Elisa, please! Do come in, Tommen, but be sure to close the door."

"Ser Uncle is on guard outside," Tommen said, throwing himself across her huge bed with a grin. "He does so hate having to mind you when there are actual _people _about."

"I do not understand why you all have such a low opinion of my instinct for self-preservation," Myrcella sniffed, swatting away Elisa's hands and tucking another half dozen curls and pins in place herself. "Have I ever actually put myself in danger?"

"Yes," Tommen laughed. "More times than I can count without taking my boots off. The poor Kingsguard are dreading the day when they become the Queensguard."

"I think I shall dress them in pink just for their cowardice."

Elisa gave an approving murmur.

"Your uncle the Kingslayer would look fine in pink," she opined. "Although I daresay Old Whitebeard would look better in turquoise."

The idea of Barristan Selmy, so reserved and dignified, outfitted in turquoise scale and silks, was enough to set both Myrcella and Tommen off into fits of laughter.

* * *

Robert started laughing as soon as Myrcella slipped into his rooms. Tommen was close on her heels as always – the lad was more fiercely protective of his sister than Robert was, or even than young Robb was, which was no mean feat – and outfitted in a sensible black velvet doublet, dark gold woollen breeches and long black boots worked with gold on the turn-downs, along with a short black cape lined with gold silk.

Myrcella, on the other hand… Mayhaps that Lannister ostentation would come in useful for once.

"Lannister or Baratheon?" he teased, taking in the magnificent sweep of cloth-of-gold that made up her gown. With her dark hair and the deep black cloak hanging about her shoulders – sewn as it was with a crowned stag, it might have been a marriage cloak, which was exactly the point – she looked every inch the Queen she would be come her next name day.

She rolled her eyes in response and picked a non-existent speck of dust from the black velvet of his doublet, almost the twin of Tommen's if slightly more luxurious.

"Baratheon, of course," she said, smiling up at him from beneath her diadem. She had the Lannister cheekbones, but aside from that she was the image of him, of Renly, but mercifully not of Stannis. "I would have done as Joff does and worn crimson with it otherwise."

"And did I pay for this?" he asked mildly, offering her his arm and shaking his head.

She blushed, which made Tommen laugh.

"It is important that I make a lasting impression," she pointed out. "Especially after today – although I'm fairly certain Balon Greyjoy will disrespect me on general principle unless I take the Crow's Eye's head with my own hands."

"I imagine using a sword would be easier, your highness," the Kingslayer commented from behind them, walking alongside Selmy with a grin playing about his lips. "Neater, too."

Myrcella glared at him playfully, unable to entirely stop a smile.

"Do shut up, Uncle Jaime," she ordered, tilting her chin and turning away from him. "You are a most frightful boor, did you know that?"

"An insult usually reserved for my brother-"

"Enough!" Myrcella laughed, huddling closer to Robert's arm for a moment when Cersei emerged onto the corridor with Joffrey on her arm. He'd grown taller since he'd been at Storm's End with Renly, but he was still thin – he didn't have the Baratheon shoulders, that was for certain, nor even that leaner but still formidable Lannister build.

And he was still a horrible little shit, if the derisive curl of his lip was anything to go by. The first born son of the King of the Seven Kingdoms and Lord of House Baratheon, Joffrey was and always had been the worst kind of idiot, and Cersei had only been a hindrance in straightening the boy out.

At nine-and-ten, Joffrey should by rights have been searching for a wife – not that there were many women outside the Vale of Arryn who were entirely comfortable with the idea of submitting to a husband both as lord and lord protector – but instead, he'd proceeded to wench his way around the Stormlands, leaving a trail of worrisome whispers and even more worrisome broken women in his wake. Something had to be done, but for the moment Robert was too busy with the council to worry about his wayward son.

"Brother," Myrcella said, smiling thinly. "It is good to see you. Storm's End suited you, I think. You seem in rare health."

Joffrey sneered, an expression he had down to a fine art, but Myrcella's smile only bloomed brighter and warmer. Robert didn't have to glance down to know that Tommen had taken his sister's hand, making them united against Joffrey as they had been since they could both walk.

"We will have to take a meal together this week," she said, still smiling even though her eyes were wickedly cold. "But come, let us enter together, yes? I imagine Uncle Renly will be waiting, with Uncle Stannis and Lady Selyse and Shireen."

Stannis disliked Joffrey more even than he disliked most of the rest of his family, and even Robert's own disdain for his brother did nothing to lessen the amusement he found in Stannis and Joffrey's ever more awkward exchanges.

* * *

The feast, though a roaring success, was utterly boring.

Myrcella was seated at Father's right hand, as was her right, but Tommen was off to his left, beyond Mother and beside Sweetrobin – she pitied her brother more than just about anyone in the room for that – and Lord Jon and Lady Lysa.

To Myrcella's right was Renly, but he had his hands full trying to control Joffrey, who was behaving as a spoiled brat.

"Enough of this," she said at last, pushing back from the table as the final course was cleared. "Father, you are drunk, and for that reason I am seeking other company. Tommen?"

Tommen all but leaped to his feet, unutterably grateful to be excused from Sweetrobin's awful company, and together they made their way down from the dais to the high table, holding those Great Houses who were not the King's brothers or his Hand – the Starks, the Tullys, the Greyjoys, the Lannisters, the Tyrells and the Martells.

Margaery Tyrell, caught between her father and one of the Greyjoys, sprang to her feet at the sight of Tommen and Myrcella's approach. She was in silk of the most marvellous shade of greenish gold, something which should have looked sickly but didn't, with a cloak of heavy green velvet patterned with golden roses hanging from her shoulders.

"Music!" she called, clapping her hands. "Come, let us have music!"

The musicians, crowded at the bottom of the hall, came alive at her summons, and tables were quickly pushed back to ensure that the dance floor would be as large as possible.

"Thank the gods," she murmured, staying on her feet as the crowds moved quickly to the floor. "I swear it, Cella, the bloody Greyjoys stink of fish, all save the pretty one warded to the Starks."

Myrcella laughed and looped her arm through Margaery's, standing on tip-toe to find-

"You've been avoiding me, your highness," Robb Stark murmured, his lips scandalously close to her ear and his hand altogether too low on her hip. "Would you care to take a turn around the floor?"

She glanced back over her shoulder at him, smiling as coyly as she knew how, and bit her lip.

"Mayhaps later," she said lightly, and something flashed across those damnable eyes of his so quickly that none other would have noticed it, much less been able to interpret it.

"As you will, Princess," he said, releasing his hold on her and bowing low before disappearing back into the throng. He was replaced almost instantly by his sisters, Sansa Stark and Arya Tully, and Myrcella's cousins, Shireen Baratheon, and Joy Lannister.

"Come, we'll find a table away from the dais," Myrcella said, taking Sansa's hand and leading them through the fray to a recently abandoned table. Arya and Joy were teasing Shireen about something, Myrcella couldn't hear what over the hubbub, but then again, she had to contend with Sansa and Margaery teasing _her._

"You know, you do have to _ask _before you marry Sansa's brother," Margaery mocked, giggling around Myrcella at Sansa, who frisked her heavy cloth-of-silver and ermine cloak with a shrug of one elegant shoulder. Myrcella was taller than any of the women in their little party, more curvaceous, too, but Sansa and Margaery in particular exuded an effortless sort of elegance that she was enormously jealous of.

"Do stop, Margaery," Sansa laughed, blushing at the impropriety of it all. "We shouldn't speak of such things here-"

"Calm yourself, Sansa," Myrcella soothed, tightening her grip on Sansa's hand incrementally. "We will speak on the morrow."

When finally the six of them reached the table, it was with a flurry of heavy cloaks and relieved sighs.

"I swear, if Elisa ever ties my stays this tight again, I might have to bloody well gut her," Myrcella groused, tugging ineffectually at the bottom edge of her corset. "I can't damn well breathe!"

Arya, resplendent in Tully red-and-blue and silver trout, snorted in derision.

"At least you have the teats for it," she said shortly, looking forlornly down at her own boyish figure. "Even with a damned corset I still look like Jon. Or Father."

Joy, who was the only one who could compare with Myrcella's bosom, heaved a sigh that set her corset creaking – her stays had been tied even tighter than Myrcella's, it seemed – and shifted her crimson-and-gold cloak with a frown.

"Bad enough your bloody handmaid is the one trussing you up like a bird for table, Cella," she huffed, "but I have Aunt bloody Genna coming in and pulling me tight enough to snap me in two whenever there's someone outside the family who might see. It's as if she's trying to make everyone forget I'm a bastard by making me look a whore, silly woman."

Sansa and Shireen flushed at Joy's words – a common occurrence, because Joy's father, Myrcella's greatuncle Gerion, had kept her hidden away from the family for six years, until he had set out for old Valyria and never returned, for fear that Genna would legitimise her and name her heir to the Rock. Joy was still learning what was expected of a highborn lady, particularly one who was heir to one of the Great Houses.

Arya bit her lip to hide her laughter, but Sansa saw and frowned at her little sister. Myrcella acted quickly to forestall the oncoming argument.

"Come then," she said briskly, clapping her hands with a smile. "North, Riverlands, Westerlands, Crownlands and Reach – tell me what news there is of my realm, bannerwomen."

And so sat Myrcella's small council.

* * *

"You have evaded my company for too long, your highness – even your father has commented on how unlike you it is not to dance."

Myrcella turned and glared playfully up at Robb, hands on his hips and eyes bright with mirth.

"Fiend," she said fondly, waiting until he held out his hand before moving to stand. "Dragging me away from friends I see so rarely-"

"Nonsense," he said cheerfully. "Might I steal away the princess for a times, my ladies? If she concentrates so fiercely for too long, she will be as wrinkled as the Lords Greyjoy by her twentieth name day-"

"Do shut up," Myrcella laughed, pushing at his shoulder and winking back at her friends. "You wished to dance with me, Ser Robb, so dance."

And dance he did – Robb was light on his feet, and strong enough to toss Myrcella about in the whirling Iron Islands' dances as if she were a child, not a woman barely six inches smaller than him and broad, if not fat, with it.

"You know," he said breathlessly, spinning her down out of a lift with a laugh, "you really _have _been avoiding me this past while."

"How am I to approach your sister about marrying you and retain the respect of my people if those damnable rumours of you sharing my bed linger to sully both of our reputations? I won't have it said I took you as my Lord Protector and consort just because you took my maidenhead."

He raised a questioning eyebrow, and she scowled.

"Don't dare say it, Stark," she warned. "Don't dare. Why do you think I sent you home to Winterfell with the summons to the council?"

"Because you had to make certain everyone could see you aren't with child when we announce our betrothal," he sighed, rolling his eyes in irritation. "I know that, Myrcella, but-"

"No, Robb," she cut in. "It was the only way. I shan't regret it."

"You've missed me, though – you must have done. I missed you."

She softened slightly, enough to blush and smile just a little, but not enough to do as she wished she could and tell him to come to her rooms two hours before dawn, when the guard on her door changed and it was unattended for perhaps ten minutes or so, giving him ample opportunity to sneak in.

Robb _had _taken her maidenhead, just before he returned to Winterfell not four moons past, something even those who had started the rumours didn't know for certain, but that was not why she was marrying him. Or rather, why she was going to approach Sansa, the head of his House_, about_ marrying him.

Nobody would believe her if she told them she loved him, of course, which was why they had to work to squash the whispers that they were already lovers before they could become officially betrothed.

"I've half a mind to throw this damned cloak around your shoulders, if only to deter Jeyne bloody Westerling and Dacey bloody Mormont from looking at you like a side of beef," she grumbled, her smile widening when he blushed. "Oh come now – every woman with half a brain and a need for a husband is looking at you like that, you and the Tyrells and the Martells and every other man who looks anywhere half so fine as you do."

"And every man, even those _with _wives and without even half a brain, is looking at you in that gown," he snapped back, eyes bright with embarrassment and amusement. He very pointedly did not look down at the heavy swell of her bosom. "Was that your intention?"

"To make you jealous?" she asked, barely noticing when the music shifted to a quicker, lighter quickstep from the Reach. She knew the steps well enough to dance them without paying much mind, just as Robb did, and even though she knew they should probably find new partners to avoid arousing suspicion, she stayed resolutely in his arms. "I would never do such a thing, ser. I am insulted-"

"Cella," he said, smiling fondly the way he often did before kissing her. Gods, she wished he would kiss her, but they were already toeing the line simply by dancing together. If anyone were to catch them – it didn't bear thinking about. She didn't think even Renly or Tyrion would help her cover up the nature of her relationship with Robb, not with so much resting on her reputation and his. If she was outed as wanton, many of her bannerwomen and none of her bannermen would never respect her as they should, and if Robb was outed as promiscuous, he might never make a match because no woman would ever believe that he would remain faithful to her.

Assuming, that was, that Father didn't march them to the sept the moment he heard and hold them both in the shadow of his hammer until they said their vows and Myrcella wrapped Robb in black-and-gold.

"Hush," he said,

She saw Sansa dancing past with one of the Tyrells – he didn't have a beard, so not Garlan, and was too tall for Loras, so he must be Willas – and Margaery with Theon Greyjoy, who had long been a ward of House Stark. Shireen was spinning around with Robb's younger brother, Bran, and Joy with Quentyn Martell, of all people – a Lannister and a Martell! The very idea! – but Arya was nowhere to be seen. She wondered at that briefly, but was distracted when a particularly rapid twirl allowed Robb to press her tight against his body, crushing her breasts against his chest and rocking his hips into hers for the briefest of moments.

She saw the light in his eyes, dark and bright all at once, and knew that she had to see him in private.

"I feel a pressing need to pray tonight," she said absently, curtsying out of the dance as the music sprang to a close. "A good ruler should know all of her people, and all of their gods. I am told that Harrenhall has a fine godswood."

Robb's eyes darkened and brightened at the intimation in her words.

"You will need a guide who follows the old gods, your highness," he murmured, bowing over her hand and pressing a lingering kiss to her knuckles. "I would be honoured to oblige."

* * *

Arya sat with Edmure and Patrek and watched the dancefloor carefully.

"Robb's fucking the princess," she said at last. "He has to be. Look at how close they're dancing."

Patrek snorted into his ale, but Edmure frowned.

"The King will have his head if he finds out-"

"Myrcella's going to ask Sansa for the right to cloak Robb tomorrow," Arya cut in. "Nobody'll tell the King outright about Robb and Myrcella, so he'll only have rumours, and he likes Robb so he won't believe them."

"What about Lady Stark and the blushing flower?" Patrek asked, leaning his elbows on his knees with a grin. "What say you of them, Lady Tully?"

Arya wrinkled her nose, watching Sansa and the really very tall eldest Tyrell brother, Willas.

"Sansa's too proper to give up her maidenhead before her wedding night," she said dismissively. It was true, of course, and Sansa was also too clever to even so much as kiss a man who might tell tales of her. At eighteen, Sansa had confided, the Lady of Winterfell had kissed all of two men as anything other than daughter or sister or niece. There had been Harry Hardyng, a pretty-boy knight from the Vale who was second-in-line to the Eyrie, who had visited Winterfell with Lord Arryn when Sansa had come of age and apparently charmed a kiss from her, and there had been Smalljon Umber, which had surprised Arya beyond all reckoning. The Umbers were one of a tiny number of Houses in the North that inherited through the male line, and Smalljon was his father's heir and therefore completely ineligible to marry Sansa – and besides, he was a giant, over seven feet tall with the build to match, and not near pretty enough for what Arya had thought to be Sansa's tastes.

Arya herself had kissed more boys than Sansa, something which had surprised both sisters. There had been Olyvar Frey, who she had kissed simply to annoy his brother Elmar, and there had been Ned Dayne – oh, he was _beautiful, _even if the talk of his aunt being Jon's mother did somewhat put a damper on things.

There had been the smith's apprentice who had been heading for the Wall, Gendry, who even Arya could see was the image of the King, of Myrcella, and was probably one his many bastard children. He had been so different to Olyvar, who had been desperately shy, and Ned, who had known _exactly _what he was doing and had taught her a great deal during his stay in Riverrun with Ser Beric Dondarrion, with whom he had been squiring at the time. Gendry had been distrustful of her attentions at first, but by the time she shoved him down onto the bench in the forge…

He worked with Rory now, Riverrun's smith, which had amused Edmure no end.

Of course, there had been Tommen, which had been an experiment on both their parts, one which had ended in both of them deciding that they were better as friends.

Watching Robb and Myrcella twirl past in a wave of gold and silver and black and white, then Sansa and Willas a wave of auburn and chestnut and ermine and brilliant green, Arya wondered if it was time for her to return to the floor. Mother had suggested that she dance with as many young men as she could tonight, try to find someone who would not mind terribly if she invaded his duties as her Lord Protector when she married him and Edmure disappeared off to Dorne, married to Princess Arianne.

"Who should I dance with next?" she asked, nudging Edmure with her elbow and ignoring Patrek's laughter. "Mother says I need a Lord Protector sooner rather than later."

Edmure scanned the crowds heaving about the edges of the floor with sharp eyes, and then-

"Arianne's brother is free," he said, pointing to the youngest Prince of Dorne. Trystane was much more handsome than Quentyn, with glossy black hair and enormous, almost-black eyes that seemed too knowledgeable for his years. "What about him?"

Trystane was also standing with Ned Dayne, who caught Arya's eye and winked.

"I rather think I'll dance with Ned instead," she decided, bounding to her feet and flicking back her cloak carelessly. "Have a cup waiting for each of us when we come back, uncle!"

* * *

Sansa gasped when Willas dropped his hands to her waist and swept her clean off the ground, several inches higher than necessary, and set her down once more with a shy smile before retaking the proper position and settling easily back into the dance.

"They say the North has a very strange beauty," he said, continuing on with their conversation as though they were sitting at tea. "The Reach is easy to love, I know, and I have travelled much in Dorne and the Stormlands as well, but I have never been even as far north as Riverrun."

Sansa laughed at the notion of Riverrun being considered northerly, given that she had always thought of her mother's seat as being so very far south – she had sometimes pitied Robb, being so far from home in King's Landing, but usually she envied him the opportunity to enjoy the pageantry and festivity of the capital – and shook her head.

"It took me years to understand my homeland," she admitted. "When I was younger, I wished that I might switch places with my sister – she always seemed much more at home in Winterfell than I did. However, as I began to learn my duties with Father, as I met my people and began to learn _them… _Being a queen is all well and good, but knowing the North as I do now, I can understand why Evanda Stark was willing to give up her crown to save her people and her lands. _My_ lands."

"She sounds to have been a formidable woman," Willas agreed, his warm eyes smiling. "Is it true that Aegon the Conqueror offered to make her his third wife when her Lord Protector died?"

That made Sansa laugh as well.

"If it is, she refused him," she giggled. "Evanda took only one husband. No Stark has ever remarried after being widowed unless she was left without a daughter. My father was the first man to hold Winterfell in his own right in – oh, I don't even know how long. Generations. Centuries."

"My father was the third man in as many generations to hold Highgarden," Willas told her, frowning slightly. "His sisters both died without any children, and so Highgarden passed to him… Margaery is a blessing, although I sometimes think Mother might dispute that."

Sansa tilted her head in askance, and Willas blushed.

"I speak out of turn," he admitted, "but Mother and Margaery often don't see eye to eye. Margaery is what Mother terms as "wilful," a trait she seems to share with Princess Myrcella."

Sansa ducked her head to hide another bout of giggles.

"I think that mayhaps _all _of our mothers would call us "wilful" from time to time, ser," she japed, squeaking in a manner most unbefitting of the Lady of Winterfell when he dipped her low, not caring that every other man who actually knew his steps was doing the same to his partner because she, like Myrcella and Joy, had been laced excessively tight into her bodice and the last thing she wanted was for even more of her bosom to be exposed. "I say, ser! Some warning would be appreciated!"

Willas threw back his head and laughed, and Sansa thought that mayhaps she would dance another round with him.

* * *

Bran Stark was altogether too intelligent for his own good.

"You're not shy of your greyscale," he declared, pouring a cup of wine and setting it down in front of Shireen. "You're tired of people's reactions to it. That's entirely different, if I may say so."

Joy spun past with Theon Greyjoy, both of them shouting all manner of lewd suggestions, and Shireen rolled her eyes.

"If I keep it hidden, they cannot react adversely to it," she pointed out, fingers ghosting over the hard grey skin that covered her jaw and half her cheek and spread down her neck in ugly, cracked fingers of dead flesh. "Surely that is understandable? I would not be as beautiful as my cousin regardless, but it hardly helps matters."

"My lady-"

"Do not tell me that I am beautiful," she warned, raising a finger. She wondered if mayhaps she was drunker than she had supposed – she was not usually so forthright as this. "I have my mother's ears and my father's jaw, which would be an unfortunate combination even had I been born male."

Bran grinned, his handsome Tully features strong and clear, and held up his own cup towards her.

"A toast then," he said, "to those women lucky enough to be unaware of their own beauty."

Shireen rolled her eyes, unaware how like Myrcella she was when she did that, and tipped her cup against Bran's with a smile.

* * *

"I detest him," Joy said, no heat in her words even though her eyes burned into her uncle's back. "He's vile, truly he is."

Quentyn Martell, still not entirely sure how he'd found himself sitting with the heir to House Lannister, hummed in agreement, not daring to give voice to the depth of his hatred for Tywin Lannister. Joy was a force of nature, a whirlwind and flashing smiles and heaving bosom that had confounded him from the moment she'd taken his hand and tugged him onto the floor without a word of askance.

"You can say it," Joy told him, the faintest hint of mirth hidden behind the careful masking of her true accent. When she forgot herself, she still spoke like the common girl she'd been raised as until her father had gone missing, and Quentyn was irritated to find that he rather liked it. He was irritated by how much he liked _her, _knowing as he did that, as a Martell, it was his inborn duty to despise all members of House Lannister. "Uncle Tywin is a frightful old bastard – although mayhaps I of all people should refrain from using that word, shouldn't I?"

* * *

He could feel his uncle's eyes burning on the back of his head, but Quentyn could not stop himself laughing.

"I don't know what to do with him," Robert said gloomily, leaning heavily on the table between Ned and Jon. "Renly says he's worse than ever now."

"Send him to the Wall and make Tommen Renly's heir," Ned japed, flushed and merry with ale. Robert enjoyed it immensely when Ned got drunk, partially because it was such a rare occurrence and partially because Ned relaxed enough to let his natural wit shine through. "All your problems are solved!"

Jon huffed a laugh at that and sipped from his own tankard.

"Aye, and Joffrey would be sent out on a ranging a week after arriving in the hopes that he'd get himself killed by a wolf or a wildling," he said wryly. "He makes it difficult to like him-"

"Unless you're his mother," Robert agreed. "Aye, he's a right little shit. Doesn't even look a thing like me, not like the other two."

"Myrcella's the very image of your mother," Jon said with a fond smile. "A formidable woman – Myrcella takes after her very much."

"And Tommen is too much like Renly and the Kingslayer to be much use to anyone but his sister," Robert admitted, shaking his head. "He worships her – says he's going to join her Queensguard as soon as a place opens on it."

"Is that likely to happen soon?" Ned asked, scratching at the dense scrub of beard under his chin. Robert had always envied Ned's beard for sheer thickness – it always seemed darker than his own, even though Ned's hair was lighter in colour and he kept his beard trimmed close to his face.

"Not unless someone kills all those Lannister cronies that were installed after the Rebellion," Robert laughed. "The only ones I'd trust completely with her are Barristan Selmy and Arys Oakheart. And the Kingslayer, I suppose. He dotes on her almost as much as Tommen does."

"And you can barely stand to look at her," Ned teased. "You could organise a tourney and bribe men into killing the ones you _don't _trust," he added as an afterthought.

"Ned!" Robert exclaimed, horrified at this sudden departure from Ned's famous – or infamous – honour. "None would bat an eyelid if they heard me saying such a thing, but _you!"_

Ned and Jon roared with laughter, and Robert suddenly realised both that he had been the subject of a jape and that he was much drunker than he had first supposed. That in mind, he threw back his head and laughed along with them.

* * *

"You have not danced with Jon yet," Myrcella murmured, looking down into her cup as she spoke to Margaery. "He is just over there, with Robb. Would you care to take a turn about the floor with him?"

Margaery gritted her teeth and shook her head.

"I asked him," she spat. "I walked right up to him and asked if he would dance with me, and he said _no! _He refused me, Cella!"

Myrcella glanced across to where Robb was sitting with his brother, heads close together and faces serious, and sighed.

"He's afraid of dishonouring you, Margaery," she pointed out. "Whatever chance there is of Robb and I escaping the rumours about us unscathed, there are none for you – Jon's a bastard, Marg. He never forgets that, and nor should you."

* * *

Boros Blount was on duty at Myrcella's door when she arrived on Father's arm for bed. If he was on guard now, that meant Jaime would be taking over – which meant only a _five _minute window of opportunity to escape and see Robb.

Normally, such things would present a problem.

Normally, though, the Kingsguard on her door was not privy to the nature of her and Robb's relationship, much less encouraging thereof, and so it was at two hours before dawn that Myrcella, wrapped up in a thick black wool cloak, slipped out of her rooms and stood on tiptoe to kiss Jaime's cheek.

"Don't tell Mother," she whispered, grinning from under her hood.

"Don't get caught," he murmured back, standing tall and handsome in his gleaming white armour – white, because Father had confiscated his gilded armour for the duration of the council – with the tiniest of smiles on his face.

Myrcella giggled, but she ran carefully down the corridor and out into the night with her eyes flickering this way and that all the same. It would not do for her to get caught.


	5. Wheels within wheels

**AN: **Longer note at the end, but for now I'd just like to let you know that the only age I fiddled with was Sweetrobin's – he's now the same age as Bran and Tommen, a little older, making him nearly fifteen here. Jsyk.

* * *

Myrcella's ribs ached as she crept through the stables, trying to avoid the lengthening fingers of silvery dawn light sliding across the ground.

"You are up early, niece."

She winced, straightened, and turned to smile at Tyrion, scrubbing his face and quite obviously coming from an encounter with some whore who'd taken his fancy.

"And you, uncle," she pointed out, pulling her cloak closer around herself and rubbing her side. Robb had been sympathetic of the bruises left by her stays, but he'd been more interested in kissing them better than finding ice for her. "It is barely dawn-"

"And no doubt you have been out and about for… Oh, two hours or so?"

She stiffened, spine ramrod straight, and schooled her face into a mask of polite confusion.

"Uncle Tyrion-"

"I am not Renly to be perturbed by your youthful innocence, sweetling," he mocked, eyes twinkling merrily in the gloom. "You have become a very good actress in my absence, my dear, but I am one of the few people privileged to be confidante to my brother. Come, let us find some food – the kitchens here are as bloated as the rest of the place, there's bound to be something to eat for the Crown Princess and her ugly uncle."

Myrcella grinned and took Tyrion's outstretched hand with a laugh.

"I should have known Uncle Jaime would tell you," she sighed, swinging their hands between them. "How was Lys, Uncle Tyrion? I trust you enjoyed it?"

"A place where they worship gods of wine and sex? How could I not?"

"You are frightful," she teased, squeezing tight on his fingers. "Do promise not to tell anyone you found me out here, Tyrion – I can't-"

"I would not," he said firmly. "I am more than capable of keeping a secret, Myrcella. So long as you do intend on marrying the Stark boy, I see no reason why you shouldn't fuck him beforehand. Now, tell me – do they have that black ale the Northmen make with such skill, or will I be forced to confine myself to wine for the duration of my stay?"

* * *

Sansa lay in bed for a long while after waking, looking up at the pale green silk of the bed hangings and wondering how in the world she'd found herself in such a situation as she had the previous night, pressed against a wall in some forgotten corridor with Willas Tyrell's tongue in her mouth and her hands under his shirt.

It had started, of course, with shy smiles across the table while they ate, and progressed to their dancing exclusively with one another, and somehow developed into their sneaking away while nobody was looking – and they'd been very careful to ensure that nobody was looking – and somehow, although Sansa wasn't entirely sure how, she'd ended up dizzy and red-cheeked and feeling as if she'd just discovered something she'd been missing her whole life.

The filthy, obscene, utterly heart stopping words Willas had whispered into her ears, against her skin, they had been the clincher. Sansa wasn't sure she'd trust herself to dance with him again, not when she now knew that the sweet, shy man that everyone else saw became a… A _deviant _in private.

A deviant she very much enjoyed.

Arya slipped into their shared room not long after dawn and clambered into bed beside her, pink-faced and still slightly tipsy.

"I shall miss Edmure when he goes to Dorne," she giggled, kicking off her boots, stripping off her cloak and gown, and snuggling against Sansa's side under the covers. "He is the most enormous fun."

"Arya," Sansa said, rolling over to look her sister in the eye, "do you think you'll marry soon?"

"Oh, eventually I will_," _Arya informed her, waving an airy hand and laughing some more. "But I shan't let Mother and Father choose a husband for me. Mother seems to think that I should marry someone from the Riverlands because I'm so much a Stark, but… I think I'm rather young to marry just yet."

"Father thinks I should marry a Northman," Sansa said softly. "He suggested – Lady Karstark has put forward one of her brothers, as has Lady Manderly. I don't want to marry any of them, Arya – and it would be better for Winterfell, for the North, to bring in new blood. We've been too isolated for too long, I think."

"Who will you marry, then? Harry Hardyng? Joffrey Baratheon? Quentyn Martell? You know you can't just choose some lesser House and order them to give you their handsomest son."

Sansa sighed, flopping down onto her back and folding her hands together under her breasts. There was a handkerchief sewn with golden roses tucked under her pillow that smelled just faintly of summer.

"I don't rightly know yet," she said, staring once more at the pale green hangings, "but I know I don't want Mother and Father to choose for me."

* * *

Council convened smelling heavily of hangovers and headaches.

Myrcella felt as if her eyes were about to fall out of her head, but she pushed aside her exhaustion and forced herself to listen to Grandfather's measured opinions on…

Well, on everything, it seemed. He was apparently once more trying to convince Father to make him Hand. Myrcella caught Joy's eye and almost laughed when her cousin shrugged and scowled. She chanced to glance across at Sweetrobin, and he seemed offended on his father's behalf by Grandfather's behaviour – there was nothing honourable about Tywin's loaded remarks, and Sweetrobin Arryn took his words very seriously indeed.

"… we crushed the Targaryens once before, we will do it again."

"The Targaryens were _crushed, _Lord Tywin, through a mix of Aerys' madness and your own particular brand of tactics," Lord Eddard said quietly from Sansa's side, his long face creased with a frown. "We do not have those… advantages this time."

Myrcella admired his ability to insult Grandfather without actually saying anything insulting. Sansa was watching Aunt Genna with cool eyes, and Robb – sitting to Sansa's left as her heir – was glaring at the Lannisters as a whole.

Tommen, of course, was being grossly unhelpful and simply sat to the other side of Father, leaning back in his chair and trying to hide a smile. Tommen was never any use on such occasions as these, because he always seemed to find some source of amusement which left him unable to do anything save laugh when it would embarrass someone and make scathing comments when the opportunity arose.

"Lord Tywin," Myrcella said tiredly, holding up a hand when Grandfather moved to argue with Lord Eddard. "Enough. While the crown acknowledges your part in the war against the Targaryens, you are not by any means the only man here to have commanded an army any more than Lady Lannister is the only woman to have ruled a domain. Please – ideology has no place at this table, and what you saying is of no practical use. Anti-Targaryen sentiment has little to do with the _practicalities _of this council. Few here would welcome Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons to Westeros, we are all aware of that."

She paused for breath, raising an eyebrow when Grandfather stood up.

"If it please you, your highness-"

"It would please me for you to allow others to speak, Lord Tywin," she said sharply. "This council is not a pulpit from which you might make your case to be chosen as Hand of the King in Lord Arryn's place."

Genna stood at Grandfather's side, fists balled on the table top as she loomed threateningly towards Myrcella.

"Now see here-"

"You see here!" Father boomed, louder than Genna and twice as imposing. "You will not speak to the future Queen in that manner! Now sit down and let someone else have their turn!"

Silence vibrated in his wake, and then Father nodded sharply at Genna and Grandfather.

_And they sat down._

Myrcella caught Renly's eye for an instant and was relieved to find her uncle as stupefied as she was herself by this development. Myrcella could not recall any Lannister ever doing as they were told without considerably more fuss.

Then she saw the way Grandfather was watching Father, and she wondered if that was how a lion watched its prey – with patient, deadly intent.

* * *

A recess was called at noon, and Myrcella retreated gladly to one of the anterooms, pulling Tommen, Renly and Shireen with her. She had not managed to get to Joy before Genna dragged her away with a face like thunder, Sansa and Arya were closeted away with their parents to discuss the morning's proceedings, and Margaery's father was doubtless trying to convince her to pick a husband – he seemed to speak of little else. It was a whispered opinion shared by half the realm that at one-and-twenty, Margaery was more than old enough to choose a husband, and many feared that she would follow the example of her aunt, Lady Hightower, and simply refuse to marry, leaving Highgarden once more without a female heir.

"Well, Joffrey has once more made a complete fool of himself and done everything in his amazingly considerable powers to dishonour the Baratheon name," Myrcella huffed, throwing herself back into a chair. "Just shove him over a cliff and have done with it, Renly – or better yet, find someone willing to testify against him and have him sent to the Wall."

Tommen leaned over the back of her chair and patted her hair absentmindedly, just as he had for longer than either could remember when her temper flared.

"I think Joffrey might be the least of our problems, sweet sister," he chided calmly. "I rather think Grandfather and Prince Oberyn are more worthy of our concern, and Lord Greyjoy with them."

"Tommen has the right of it," Shireen agreed, settling lightly beside Myrcella with a grace that would have caused even Margaery Tyrell to be envious. "Lord Greyjoy in particular – whether he named his son his heir to keep Lady Asha with him after the Rebellion or because he means to have House Greyjoy inherit through the male line from now on, it is a worrisome problem. That will leave four of the nine districts of the realm under sole rule, without a capable female ruler who can keep the district in check should we be faced with war."

"The Arryns are hardly going to change their ways," Myrcella pointed out. "No more than the Martells – although I feel that Prince Doran is a more than capable ruler, well able to keep Dorne under control even should Prince Oberyn have to lead their spears to war." She hesitated a moment. "Mayhaps if the rumours are true, we will not have to worry about integrating them into our forces-"

"Don't dare say that," Renly said sharply. "We still have no proof that this Aegon Targaryen is genuine, Myrcella."

They sat and stood in brooding silence for ten minutes before they were called back into the council chamber.

* * *

"And pray, Lord Greyjoy, how do you propose we chase down the Targaryens? Do you imagine that your warships will be safe from her dragons' flames? We have four fleets at our disposal, including your own, and even one of her dragons could set the lot alight in minutes."

"So you propose we sit here and wait on her?" Balon Greyjoy spat at Lady Tully. Robb had his mother's eyes, her hair and cheekbones and smile, but that smile was absent as she stared coldly at Lord Greyjoy. "You would have the realm burn as it did when Aegon the Conqueror came?"

"What of the realm deigned to treat with the Targaryens did not burn," Sansa said archly, head high as she glared down her nose at the Greyjoys.

"Craven bitches that bent the knee and traitors who betrayed their liege lords," Greyjoy snarled, and the Starks and Tullys all surged to their feet at the insult to their forebears.

"Evanda Stark and Sansa Tully did what was best for their people," Sansa said, every inch the Lady of Winterfell – no, the Queen of Winter, Queen in the North, that her ancestress had been – she had been from birth as she folded her arms firmly. "A pity Alannys Hoare was not fit enough of mind to do the same and shackle her husband – but if current evidence is any indication, the Ironborn let their menfolk run wild and damn the consequences."

It seemed a day of controversy and ringing silence, Myrcella thought tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose as Asha Greyjoy ruptured the silence with something that could only be described as a screech.

* * *

It fell, as usual, to Tommen to calm Myrcella's anger.

"How _dare _Oberyn Martell imply that I am unworthy of the throne?" she shrieked, storming up and down the limited space allowed by the two brothers of the Kingsguard standing in the hallway, blocking her avenues of escape to prevent her from running off to find where the Dornish party was roomed. Mother had caught his and Jaime's arms as they left the council chamber and hissed an order to control Myrcella, but she always seemed to forget just how intensely Myrcella's rage burned – she could be the very embodiment of the Baratheon words when she felt like it.

"How _dare _he?! I am rightful heir to Robert of the House Baratheon, the first of his name, king by right of blood and conquest! How _dare _Oberyn Martell and that smirking, scheming _bitch _of a niece of his imply that the Iron Throne is not mine?!"

Tommen walked alongside her, thumbs hooked into his belt and face serenely calm. He more than anyone was used to Myrcella's tantrums, and so he waited until the first flush of rage washed through her before winding his fingers through hers and smiling.

"Now Cella," he chided gently, "you know better than to rant and rave out here where anyone might hear you."

Jaime, standing behind them, badly hid a laugh behind a cough. Arys was frowning just slightly, probably more at the insult the Martells had not-quite levelled at Myrcella than at her temper. The man seemed able to forgive just about anything in Myrcella, something which never failed to astonish Tommen. He, after all, adored Cella, but he knew that her temper and tongue were equally foul, that she could handle criticism about as well as he could handle a lance, and that she was the single most mule-headedly arrogant being in existence, save perhaps Mother or Father. Perhaps.

"But _Tommen-"_

"Enough," he said firmly, leading her by the hand to Father's chambers. "I asked Father to see about finding cinnamon milk for you to sweeten your disposition – will you come?"

She sighed and tightened her grip on his hand and allowed him to lead her away, but he knew from the set of her jaw and the way her brows slanted low over her eyes that she was still furious.

"I'll skin Oberyn Martell," Father boomed, storming into the room just as Myrcella had stormed along the corridor only moments before. "How _dare _he?!"

Myrcella rose and crossed the room to him, and soon they were talking in loud voices about the dishonour in what the Dornishman had said.

Tommen settled himself by the fire and drank half of Myrcella's cinnamon milk while she was busy complaining with Father. He would be _exhausted _by the end of council.

* * *

Joy let her head fall back over the arm of the chair into which she had flung herself side-ways, uncaring for the rich crimson velvet of her gown or the elaborate styling of her hair.

Genna and Tywin were arguing in low voices on the other side of the room, Genna's solar for the duration of their stay at Harrenhall, and Myrcella's name featured more than once, as well as "that girl," who was _always _Myrcella and her over-sharp tongue.

"As for you," Genna said, rounding on Joy at long last, "I would expect that my heir would speak up in the defence of House Lannister when we are being so cruelly targeted by the other Houses."

"Targeted? Aunt Genna, did any of them say a single word that was not _true? _Lord Stark and Prince Oberyn had the right of it! What Uncle Tywin did and ordered during the war _was _reprehensible-"

"It was _necessary," _Genna corrected sharply. "Really, Jocelyn-"

"My name," Joy interrupted, "is Joy. My father named me Joy, Aunt Genna, and you making me a Lannister instead of a Hill will not change that."

Genna's fury was impressive, but Tywin's was frightening. Joy made the mistake of catching her uncle's eye, and she knew that if she did not conform to the Lannister ideal of loyalty and pride, she might well find herself a Hill once more.

Sansa sat with her head in her hands and tried to rein in her temper while Mother and Father once more gently explained why she should – nay, she _must – _marry a Northman.

"Harrion Karstark is a fine man," Father said encouragingly. "Be reasonable, Sansa-"

"I have met every eligible young man in the North, Father, and there is not a single one of them I could imagine as my Lord Protector," she said shortly. "I do not intend to marry solely for duty – I must at least be able to hold a conversation with my husband, must I not? Not everyone is so lucky as you and Mother were. Just look at the King and Queen, after all."

Father and Mother exchanged an uneasy glance, and then Mother sighed.

"Lady Karstark is quite insistent," she said. "And she is willing to take Jon off your hands."

Jon's hand tightened so sharply on the back of Sansa's chair that the wood creaked, and Sansa's head snapped up so she could stare fully at Mother, expressing her indignant surprise with a look.

"Jon is not to be _taken off my hands," _she hissed. "He is my brother, Mother, and my sworn sword – there is not so great a need for an alliance with House Karstark or Manderly or Mormont or any of the others that I should _marry him off _to ensure peace!"

"Sansa, listen to reason-"

"No!" she said furiously, cutting Father off with a sharp gesture. "No, I shan't listen to your reason when it is so damnably unfair! If anything, we should be considering matches to the Tyrells, as the last of the Great Houses to remain loyal to the Targaryens, or the Martells, because if Aegon Targaryen is who he claims to be he is Prince Doran's _nephew! _Am I so unpopular in the North that I absolutely must marry a Northman _right now _in order to prevent them from rebelling against me, Father?"

* * *

Margaery held up her hand to inspect her perfectly manicured nails, and then she spoke.

"According to Garlan, Willas was practically _singing _when he got back to their rooms last night," she said, not quite smiling. "Honestly, every heiress in the Reach moons after him and Loras, and he dances with Sansa Stark _once _and he's dreaming of becoming Lord Protector of the North. It's typical of him, it really is."

Myrcella laughed.

"I'm serious," Margaery said. "Elayne Tarly has been making what she thinks are subtle enquiries for absolute months now, which of course means that there are street urchins in Oldtown who know every word she's said to me since she started visiting at Highgarden, and as for Desmera Redwyne – she's our cousin, of a sort, and half-matched with one of Mother's younger brothers besides, but she seems to think Willas would make a fine Admiral for her to order about just because he's shy."

"He's had enquiries from elsewhere too, hasn't he?" Myrcella teased. "Renly mentioned something about-"

"He's refused every request to cloak him since I came of age," Margaery said flatly. "It was as if he never wanted to marry – as if he had no interest in women, even!

Myrcella watched Margaery sip her drink, and hummed.

"An alliance between Houses Stark and Tyrell," she said thoughtfully. "You know, I never _did _understand why Willas was so set against marrying. He's quite sweet, really, once he stops stammering."

Margaery shook her head in exasperation.

"He had some noble tosh about remaining as first knight of Highgarden until I found someone I could bear having as my Lord Protector," she explained, clearly irritated by his sheer dogged persistence. "He is so damned stubborn, and I have never known him to do anything by halves."

"Such as diving between your grandfather and a Greyjoy reaver to earn his knighthood, rather than acquitting himself well in a tourney like any normal squire?"

"Quite so!" Margaery agreed with a laugh, rolling her head to look across at Myrcella, sprawled across the chair on the opposite side of the fire. "Do you know, he doesn't even show off that scar of his? He's so bloody-mindedly _honest _and _modest _and- and- It's as if he models himself on the knights of old or some such nonsense. It's not _practical, _Cella."

"They don't call the Reach the cradle of chivalry for nothing," Myrcella teased. "I dare say Tommen is of a similar bent, once he sets his mind of something – he's quite serious about joining the Queensguard when the time comes."

"Does he really imagine it will be _soon?"_

Myrcella frowned just slightly.

"We are at a council of war, dearest Marg," she said quietly. "Who can say what will happen?"

* * *

There was further council before dinner, but it was a very different council to the earlier one in that it was attended only by a very small group gathered together by Myrcella and Joy.

Among their number, to Myrcella's surprise, was Quentyn Martell, grumbling under his breath about having to wear armour if Joy was going to insist on manhandling him so. He stood in front of Myrcella, neither subjugation nor respect in those dark eyes, and frowned.

"I do not like you," he said flatly. "Nor do I respect you particularly, but my family are sworn to yours as our rulers, and I for one will not betray that oath."

"Even should Aegon Targaryen prove to truly be your aunt's son?"

Quentyn's frown deepened just slightly.

"If he is my aunt's son, he has made no effort to form an alliance with House Martell as yet," he said after a long, stagnant pause.

"Oh, do stop the pair of you," Joy laughed, catching Quentyn by the wrist and pulling him to sit beside her at the long table Myrcella had quietly had arranged. "We are all here for the same reasons, are we not? There must be _some _way to reason with these Targaryens, and dear old King Robert is quite incapable of seeing it, just as my beloved uncle is, I fear."

Myrcella frowned at frowning Quentyn some more, and then took her seat at the head of the table, flanked by Joy and Renly.

"Right then," she said firmly, winding her hands together and surveying the young men and women (young save Renly, she amended, and even he wasn't _that _old, he just seemed it sometimes when he put on his Lord Baratheon voice) who would rule her realm for her. Joy, Shireen, Sansa, Arya, Margaery, Renly, Sweetrobin – bothersome in his own unique way, but unshakably honourable, living up to his family's words – and Quentyn looked back at her, as did Tommen, Robb, the eldest two Tyrells and Harry Hardyng. "We have much to do, and little time to get it done in – let us begin."

* * *

Surreptition did little to help keep surreptitious affairs of their intended nature in the court of King's Landing, and as practically the entire court had jaunted to Harrenhall for the duration of the council, Robert heard about Myrcella's small council that night just after dinner.

"I don't care what the bloody hell you think is best for the realm!" he shouted, looming over her far more effectively than Genna Lannister had during the actual council that morning. "And I don't care that you'll be Queen in six moons – I am King now, and you will do as you are _told, _girl!"

"We cannot fight dragons, Father!" she insisted, hands planted firmly on her hips as she shouted right back at him. Cersei had her arms folded on the other side of the room, Tommen leaning against the wall at her side with one hand over his eyes, but Robert noticed them only in passing, because Myrcella was fighting with him.

He and Myrcella _never _fought. It simply wasn't done, and he was quite upset to be fighting with her now. That didn't mean that he was about to back down or let her win, of course, and that somehow only served to make it worse.

"We don't damn well reason with them, either!" he roared. "You've heard enough about Targaryen madness-"

"And Lannister ambition, and Baratheon fury, and Arryn honour, and all the rest of it – damn it all, Father, we may be able to keep the peace if we try to negotiate with one or the other of the Targaryens! If nothing else, we might set them against one another and buy ourselves more time!"

The door swung open, but Robert did not turn to greet his brothers, son and niece.

"You think you can _manipulate _madmen like that?!"

"I cannot," Myrcella admitted, "but I know plenty of people who can."

"Who, then?"

Her eyes slid left, and when Robert followed her gaze he was amazed to find her looking at _Tommen, _of all people.

"I think, Father," his youngest son said in that bothersomely affable manner of his, "that a tourney is in order, don't you?"

* * *

By the next morning, preparations were being made for a tourney at the end of the following week, and Robert was as enthusiastic about that as he was furious about Myrcella's hare-brained plan, which he fully intended to stop.

She had her grandfather's unnerving drive and ambition, though, and that combined with sheer force of will often meant that she was quite difficult to stop when she put her mind to something.

* * *

"Father found out," Myrcella said, wincing in anticipation of Margaery's annoyance.

"So did Father," Margaery told her morosely, kicking at a stone that had somehow both earned her ire and found its way to the top of the snow covering the paths. "And Loras, Garlan _and _Willas all disappeared for hours last night, so of course Father was in a rage _anyways. _It's as if he still forgets that _I _am technically head of House Tyrell."

Myrcella rolled her eyes and leaned close enough to whisper.

"Father often forgets that he only has six moons left on the throne," she confided, wondering if Father would still be bothering her like this in six years' time, when she was Margaery's age. "Gods, Marg, we did make a mess of that, didn't we? Charging in heedless-"

"Needed to be done," Renly said firmly, appearing from nowhere with Margaery's youngest brother, the beautiful Loras, at his side. "Robert needed a firm kick up the arse to get him moving – he's too caught up in hating the Targaryens just for sharing Rhaegar's blood and name. We've got more important things to worry about-"

"Such as the imminent burning of the realm, you mean?"

"Precisely. I knew there was a reason you're my favourite, Myrcella."

* * *

Arya had always been wary of her entire family coming together.

Jon was the main problem, of course, because his being there – his _existing – _meant that Grandfather and Edmure and Lysa sat and glared at Father on Mother's behalf whenever they were in company.

Lysa was another problem – it was never said outright, but everyone knew she was half-mad, and Edmure had accidently let slip while drunk one night that she was entirely mad when it came to Petyr Baelish, Littlefinger, who had fostered at Riverrun and somehow ensnared Lysa's heart.

Sweetrobin, too, was problematic, if only because he was so damned irritating that even _Bran _couldn't manage to really like him, even though Bran usually loved anyone who could match him in a game of riddles, and Sweetrobin had yet to lose a game to Bran.

But Jon was the main problem, and so it was Jon that Arya found herself defending when Mother and Edmure sat down for a private talk that she was only privy to by dint of being heir of Riverrun.

"Sansa and Ned _refuse _to get rid of him," Mother fumed. "Alys Karstark wants to marry him, for gods' sakes, and Sansa will not give him up!"

"Mother-"

"She won't find a better match for him, if that's her reasoning," Edmure said thoughtfully, scratching his chin. "I can't believe that she's had this good an offer for him as it is. He's only a bastard."

"No," Arya broke in, fists clenched, "he's the eldest son of Eddard Stark, Lord Protector of the North. Just because his name is Snow-"

"That is enough," Mother said angrily. "Sansa will do well-"

"Margaery Tyrell is mad about him," Arya blurted out. "She stares at him all the time, and she asked him to dance three times at the welcoming feast. _She's _a better match than Alys Karstark."

Mother and Edmure looked at her in gobsmacked amazement, and then Mother shook her head.

"Margaery Tyrell will never be allowed to marry a bastard," she said dismissively, and although Arya longed to argue she knew that once Mother called Jon a bastard, the conversation was over.

"Enough about his marriage," Edmure said brightly, hooking his thumbs into his belt and rocking back on his heels with a grin. "What about our heir apparent?"

Arya scowled. She _hated _that Jon was a problem within the family.

* * *

Further council brought further disputes between Houses Greyjoy and Stark, Lannister and Martell, Martell and Tyrell, Baratheon and Greyjoy, Baratheon and Stark, Arryn and Tully, Arryn and Baratheon…

Myrcella was heartily sick of the sound of her grandfather and Oberyn Martell's voices after six long, tiresome days spent around the council table – the only boon was that this was to be their final day in privy council, with only the Great Houses represented. Tomorrow, Myrcella and Robert would sit with a delegation from the wealthiest Houses, who would finance the war that was coming, and after that she would have meetings with every other sort of delegation imaginable.

But for today, she had to bear her grandfather _again. _She was only glad that Uncle Kevan would be in charge of House Lannister's finances when she had to discuss them. He was the best of them by a long stretch, in her opinion, save Jaime and Tyrion and, when she wasn't in one of her moods, Mother.

And Joy, of course, but Joy was too – too _good, _almost, to seem truly a Lannister. Almost like Lancel was too damned foolish.

Prince Oberyn had done everything in his power to incite Grandfather to anger except for outright accusing him of murdering Princess Elia and her children – child, really, now that Prince Aegon had apparently began a campaign to reclaim the throne his father lost for House Targaryen – and Myrcella could feel Father growing tenser and angrier with every word that passed between the two men. She kept a hand resting firmly on his wrist, her thumb rubbing back and forth over the bone, and glanced between Tommen, Joy and Shireen.

Something had to be done, and done soon, else it seemed as though Oberyn Martell would reach the end of his patience and challenge Grandfather to a duel – which couldn't be allowed to happen, of course, because Grandfather would demand Jaime as his champion, even though Kingsguard could only stand for the royal family, which would only cause more of a ruckus.

The Martells had to be appeased. Myrcella thought, and she knew that her brother and cousins agreed, that what her grandfather had ordered during the sack of King's Landing counted among the rankest of sins, and she also knew that they agreed that Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch were stains on the world that could only be removed by relieving them of their heads.

She would speak with Father – surely the Crown could overturn a judgement passed without any true trial? The rape and murder of women and children did not come under "crimes of war," but rather "war crimes," a difference Myrcella knew and understood from her studies – it was one of the reasons the Greyjoys and their Ironmen were so detested, after all – and surely, surely…

She would speak with Father. Something had to be done about the Martells.#

* * *

Father, of course, did not want to hear it.

"Gregor Clegane is one of the best soldiers we have!"

"No, Father, he is a butcher, an _animal. _The Mountain is a beast and an evil creature, and he is a danger to every man, woman and child – especially the women! – in the Seven Kingdoms while still there is breath in his lungs."

"If we are to fight the Targaryens, we'll need butchers, girl! You don't understand war, thank the gods-"

"I'll understand it less if you agree to send envoys to Princess Daenerys and Prince Aegon," Myrcella inserted quickly, eager to press any advantage Father allowed, even if it took her away from her intended purpose.

"No," he said firmly. "No envoys, no executions. Am I clear?"

"But Father, how are we to treat with Aegon Targaryen-"

"We are _not. _No damned envoys, am I understood? Now go, ready yourself for council."

_"Father-"_

"I am still King, Myrcella. You will go and ready yourself for council, and we will say no more about treating with dragonspawn or executing our strongest soldiers.

* * *

Joy slipped out of her chambers, casting about for Genna and Tywin and breathing a sigh of relief when neither of them seemed to be about. They watched her every move like hawks, as if afraid that she would jeopardise their tenuous position at the council by leaking their plans to Myrcella.

She was close to Myrcella, and she did not intend to allow Genna and Tywin to use the nefarious means they had at hand to gain power, but she would be Lady of the Rock in her own right one day and she had no intention of being nothing more than a sop to the throne. They did not need to fear her leaking their plans.

They _did _need to fear her ruining them, though, because she had no intention of allowing Genna to arrange a betrothal that she did not want to either one of Kevan's sons – Lancel! Imagine! – or some bannerwoman's son, who thought he might usurp her power when their time came to take the Rock because she was bastard-born.

If anything, being bastard-born had made Joy more determined to be strong in her own right, to refuse to bow to the power of any of the many people pulling and tugging on her.

That was why she liked Quentyn – once he'd come to terms with her being a Lannister, he simply didn't care about anything besides _Joy, _and what was rare was truly wonderful.

Someone cleared their throat politely, and she spun around to see-

"Jaime!" she gasped, surprised as always by how much smaller he seemed without either white scale or gold plate armour. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Come to visit my brother," he said, obviously amused by how flustered she was by his sudden appearance. "And you, sweet Jocelyn?"

"It's Joy," she snapped automatically, and then blushed. "My apologies – I am going for a walk to clear my head after council, that is all."

"Is that why you were so careful to make sure neither my father nor our lady aunt were present to see you leave?"

Joy scowled.

"I know you help Myrcella sneak away at night," she said quietly, stepping closer and folding her arms. "Pay me the same courtesy and take comfort that it is only afternoon?"

He laughed, then pressed a finger to his lips and shooed her away. She dashed off with a roll of her eyes, wondering if she would ever understand any of the Lannisters at all.

* * *

Harrenhall's gardens were as vast as everything else about it, and so Sansa had ample space in which to hide the fact that Willas Tyrell was attempting to court her from her family.

The only problem was, he was just as shy of her as she was of him, and it took them an age to actually say near anything at all.

"I did not mean to- to dishonour you, the other night," he said at last, hands clasped behind his back and head down in a vain attempt to hide the blush in his cheeks. It had taken almost half an hour of pleasantries to bring him to this point, and Sansa wondered why he was so bold about kissing her but so shy about talking with her.

"Did I seem to mind, ser?" she teased, and his cheeks flamed hotter. "I recall being quite as… Hmm, as enthusiastic as you were yourself."

"My lady-"

"You were not so shy the other night."

"I was drunk," he admitted. "If only slightly – drink makes me somewhat more daring, I fear."

Sansa stopped walking, holding her cloak in place with one hand and tucking her hair behind her ear with the other.

"I liked it when you when you were daring," she said firmly, waiting for him to meet her eyes. Gods, he was near thirty years of age – surely he wasn't as much a maiden as she was? She didn't know a man of _twenty _years, save mayhaps Jon, who could claim to have remained chaste! "And I should like it if you would look at me occasionally, Ser Willas, else I shall worry that you do not find me comely."

He looked at her then, alright, mouth hanging open in shock, and she tipped her head back and laughed.

"My lady, I have never found a woman more beautiful," he said stoutly, seeming offended by her blithe comment. "I would happily swear on my honour that there is not a comelier woman in the Seven Kingdoms-"

He broke off, apparently abruptly aware of what he was actually saying, but Sansa only smiled and reached out to take the hand he had been gesturing with in her own.

"Walk with me a little way," she said. "Mayhaps if we are lucky, we might come across somewhere private enough for you to be daring once more and show me just how comely you find me."

He looked at her with his mouth hanging open again, his lovely golden-green eyes wide, but he let her tug him along in her wake and, slowly, began to smile.

By the time he let her lead him back to the castle, he was talking quite animatedly about a tour of the Reach he was to accompany his sister on as soon as they returned to Highgarden, and Sansa wondered why in the gods' names he was so shy.

* * *

"Do you know," Tommen said lightly, running a soft, oiled cloth the length of his sword without looking up, "my father would quite like for me to marry you when we're both of age."

Arya raised an eyebrow, barely holding back a smile.

"Indeed," she said. "I imagine my mother would be thrilled at the prospect."

"More so than at the thought of your brother marrying my sister?"

Arya huffed a laugh and threaded another ribbon through the thick leather braid belt in her lap.

Bran looked up from his book to grin at them both.

"Oh, is there a woman doesn't want a piece of our dear brother?" he asked sarcastically. "Sansa has been inundated with requests for his rights since we arrived last week – Mother seems to think it best that we all stay in the North and Riverlands, of course, so she thinks Dacey Mormont a _fine _choice."

"But Father is so fond of _your _father that he seems to think Myrcella's the best option," Arya added. "So really, Sansa's just very confused on the entire issue."

"But she's refusing to allow Mother and Father to choose _anything _for her," Bran put in. "They wish for her to accept one of the Karstarks as her lord protector, but Sansa-"

"Has her heart set on someone else," Arya completed. "And she won't tell us who. She won't even tell _me _who!"

Tommen looked up at last, smiling just slightly.

"I thought you and Sansa could hardly bear to talk," he mocked, setting aside his oilcloth. "Honestly, Lady Tully-"

Bran snorted, a vain attempt to hide his amusement. It was well known that Arya despised being called Lady Tully, which of course meant that he and his friends – Tommen among them – were sure to call her Lady Tully as often as possible.

"I shall refuse if Mother tries to make a match between us," Arya told him firmly. "Neither of us wish to marry the other, so we simply won't."

"And who _do _you wish to marry, sweet sister?" Bran asked, sprawling across his chair with a grin. "You've spent time with so many young men since we arrived here that I can hardly keep track-"

* * *

"Mystery knights," Robert fumed, slumping back in his chair and taking a long swallow of his ale. "Fucking _mystery _knights."

Myrcella, sitting at his side, bit back a smile and kept her eyes fixed firmly on the lists. Cersei was at his other side, shoulders tight and mouth thin. She seemed as unimpressed by the appearance of a knight bedecked all in black having appeared as he was. Even the bastard's _shield _was black – he'd wondered, for a moment, if mayhaps it was Ned's lad, Jon, but then Jon had appeared with young Robb and some of the others, and Robert had once more been left wondering.

He _hated _mystery knights, almost as much as he'd hated the idea of ordering a tourney at Harrenhall of all places, but Myrcella had begged and pleaded, and she'd been wonderful during council so far…

"I think it's very exciting," she said, looking back over her shoulder at him. "Do cheer up, Father, else nobody will dare enjoy themselves – yesterday went well enough, didn't it?"

The melee had gone well, that was true, and nobody had died during the early rounds in the jousting, but it was still a damned tourney, and the damned _mystery knight _was still in the reckoning.

Joffrey had been knocked out in his first round, taken clean from his horse by Willas Tyrell, who'd seemed embarrassed by the uproarious cheering from Storm- and Crownlanders alike – Robert had known his eldest son to be unpopular, but he hadn't realised quite how deep-seated the dislike of Joffrey was. Now, Joff was sulking in the royal box, beyond Cersei, glaring daggers at Myrcella whenever she laughed or cheered.

The mystery knight was wearing a golden ribbon on his left arm, a favour from Myrcella to match the one she had tied around young Robb's arm the day before, and Robert hated all the more that the bastard had had the nerve to so much as ask the Crown Princess for her favour.

Tommen was nowhere to be seen, busy squiring for Barristan Selmy and, for today, the Kingslayer – the only two members of the Kingsguard to have survived the first day – despite having been _knighted _of all things the day before.

That had proved something of a surprise to everyone, Tommen excepted – he'd entered the melee, unbeknownst to everyone save Myrcella, of course, and might have won had he not been left with only Garlan Tyrell and Oberyn Martell to fight. Old rivalries between Dorne and the Reach had risen up, and Tommen had been smashed out of it just so Tyrell and the Viper could have at one another.

Still, for a boy of fourteen to do so well – he had the Kingslayer's skill with a blade, that was obvious for all to see, but none of that cocky Lannister arrogance to go with it, as cheerfully unimpressed by his success as he was by just about everything else he encountered. Barristan Selmy had been falling over himself to knight the lad, and Robert had practically burst with pride at the sight of soft Tommen finally making a man of himself. Myrcella had been beside herself with glee, dancing about as Tommen said his vows with Selmy's sword on his shoulder, and she still seemed giddy in her shared delight at her brother's sudden elevation.

Although Tommen's delight might well be cause for Joffrey's foul mood, now Robert thought about it. Joffrey hated to see either his brother or sister succeed in anything at all.

Tommen earning his knighthood had been all part of Myrcella's grand plan to send envoys to the Targaryens, of course, but Robert had expected Tommen to compete against the other squires, the boys his own age, not against the men and certainly not to come so close to _victory _against seasoned warriors and fighters as he had.

Oberyn Martell and Garlan Tyrell were back in the lists today - all three Tyrells were, as well as that cursed mystery knight, the Kingslayer and Selmy, and the Mountain. An interesting field, indeed.

The eight of them were gathered at the far end of the lists, there being little enough room elsewhere for them given how hasty the preparations for Myrcella's damn tourney had been, talking among themselves. Well, the Mountain stood apart, but Robert didn't remember the man ever actually conversing, and the mystery knight, as well, helm down and head forward.

The tilts were drawn. Willas Tyrell and Oberyn Martell mounted up, rode to the royal box with their helms under their arms, and bowed.

* * *

Myrcella took the chance to truly study each of the men before her, looking at them as she so rarely got to look at anyone for fear of seeming rude.

Oberyn Martell was _interesting _looking – dark hair, laughing dark eyes, striking rather than traditionally handsome and, given his age, very attractive indeed. He noticed her looking, even though his head was down, and he winked so salaciously that she barely stopped herself from giggling even as she flushed.

Willas Tyrell, meanwhile, was as classically lovely as his brothers – he wore his hair shorter than Loras, close-cut at the sides with a fall of unruly curls at the top, and his eyes were greener, but not for nothing were the Tyrells known to be the loveliest family in Westeros.

They rode away, Myrcella watching each of them alternately – it was said that Willas was the finest horseman in the realm, but looking at them now Myrcella could see little difference between them.

They settled their helms in place, settled their lances, and settled their horses.

Myrcella gasped.

* * *

Silence hung heavy in the air until Garlan and Loras managed to roll the horse off Willas, but when he sat up, pulled off his helm and shook his head in a tumble of glossy curls and flushed cheeks, the crowd breathed a sigh of relief.

He stood and, to everyone's surprise, bowed low to the Starks.

"I apologise, my lady," he called, raising his head to look Sansa squarely in the eye. "I had intended crowning you my Queen of Love and Beauty, but alas, it will be an endeavour for another day, I fear!"

The audience hooted and cheered as he limped away with Garlan laughing and clapping him on the back, Loras supporting him on the other side, and Margaery, sitting at Sansa's side, with Father and Mother and Grandmother to her left, noticed the flush of pleasure in Sansa's cheeks and silently congratulated her sweet, shy brother for capitalising on the rush of confidence brought on by competing.

"Doubtless he'll have some gift or other for you to make up for not crowning you," she murmured in Sansa's ear. "He is quite smitten, I think."

Sansa glanced sidelong at Margaery, her cheeks darkening just slightly, and smiled primly.

"There is no need for him to give me a gift of any sort," she said firmly, but there was a change in her expression that made Margaery very curious as to the sort of gifts Willas might have given Sansa during the past two weeks.

Then again, knowing both Sansa and Willas, he'd probably managed to get through a full conversation without stammering too badly and then kissed her hand in farewell. Neither were likely to do much beyond that, unlike Robb Stark and Myrcella, who spent half their time trying to sneak away to kiss (or fuck, Margaery knew, although officially nobody knew that).

* * *

Robert was still chuckling at Willas Tyrell's display when the youngest Tyrell boy and the Mountain rode forward.

Now here was the epitome of a mismatched pair – the prettiest knight in the realm and the most terrifying. Myrcella laughed as she caught the rose Loras Tyrell tossed to her, but she regarded the Mountain with an apprehensive mix of fear and loathing.

"Please, Father," she murmured, her hand on his wrist, the way she held him when she was trying to keep his temper in check, "you must listen to reason-"

"Enough," he said firmly. "Enjoy your tourney, sweetling, and leave that for now."

She frowned slightly, but was soon swept up once more in the excitement of the joust – three lances in, though, and she was beginning to look worried.

"Father-"

"I can't make a judgement on three lances," he told her. "Let them ride again. One of them will have to fall eventually."

Loras, deep in conversation with his eldest brother – now holding himself up on crutches – at one end of the lists, nodded firmly and tugged the blanket of roses from his pretty mare's rump before setting his helm back in place and settling his lance.

They rode. Clegane's horse shied.

The Mountain fell.

* * *

The cheer that erupted was like nothing was like nothing Arya had ever heard before – it seemed as though every single person in the stands rose to their feet just to cheer Loras Tyrell on – but it died instantly as Gregor Clegane cut through his horse's neck with a single, terrible blow, and then rounded on the Knight of Flowers.

The Tyrells, sitting just down beyond Sansa and Father and the boys, shouted helplessly as Loras spun his horse to face the Mountain, but it was too late – all that freakish strength went into knocking Loras from his horse, sword flat against the elaborately tooled breastplate covering Loras' chest.

Edmure half-rose from his seat beside her, but it was the Hound, the Mountain's brother, that got his sword between the Mountain's blade and Loras.

The brothers' fighting was the most brutal thing Arya had ever seen – and that the Mountain seemed truly to be fighting for blood shocked everyone, not just her, because there was not a person in the Seven Kingdoms who did not hold kinslaying as among the greatest of sins, regardless of which gods they kept.

In the royal box, Joffrey was cheering – or jeering, she couldn't be sure – the Hound, but the Queen's lips were drawn into a thin line, Myrcella was gripping the elaborate arms of her chair white-knuckled, her face pale, and the King-

_"ENOUGH!"_

* * *

The Hound dropped to one knee immediately, ducking what would have been a killing blow, but the Mountain seemed to contemplate ending his brother for a moment before falling begrudgingly to his knee.

"Loras Tyrell is the victor," Father said coldly. "Leave the lists."

The Hound stood and sheathed his sword and moved to retake his place at Joff's shoulder, but Father held up a hand to stop him.

"Leave," he said, "the lists. Both of you. Now."

Myrcella watched the brothers Clegane stalk away, and when she turned back to the field it was to see Loras being half-carried away, apparently so thoroughly dazed by his fall that he couldn't possibly compete, which meant that one of the remaining competitors received a buy into the next round.

Father was of the opinion that the mystery knight should be excluded, but Myrcella successfully argued for waiting until the last two tilts of this round had been run and deciding then.

Barristan Selmy made short work of Garlan Tyrell, who took his defeat with a grin and a gallant bow, and it seemed obvious that Jaime would win easily against the Black Brother, as they were calling the mystery knight.

At least, it seemed obvious until Jaime was sitting on his rump and the Black Brother was carefully turning his horse at the end of the lists. Jaime seemed as surprised by it as everyone else, but he pulled off his helm and shrugged in bemusement before standing with Garlan in front of the royal box for judgement.

"Who knows who's under that damned helm?" Father fumed, waving angrily at the mystery knight. "Ser Garlan is through to the next round – be off with you, Kingslayer. Go on."

* * *

"At least one of us carried the honour of House Tyrell through into this round," Willas said, plopping himself down at Margaery's side with a huff. He stretched his leg out carefully, frowning slightly, and then smiled around his sister to Sansa.

"I thought you did very well," she said firmly. "Prince Oberyn is notorious-"

"Prince Oberyn is a snake," Willas said cheerfully. "And a wonderful drinking companion, too, with an excellent eye for horseflesh."

Margaery rolled her eyes.

"Willas is quite fond of the Viper," she said with a wry smile. "The same cannot be said for my father, of course, and he disapproves quite strongly of Willas' having Dornish friends, but I fear that that is what growing up in Oldtown does to a man."

Sansa looked at Willas, cheeks flushed and hair ruffled and smile completely uninhibited by his usual shyness, and she wondered if it would be easier to make him kiss her tonight after the feast than it had been since that first night. He'd all but refused to kiss her this past week, pleading that he didn't want to dishonour her, and it would have been infuriating if it weren't so sweet, because she really would have liked for him to kiss her again.

"What did the maester say of your leg?" Margaery asked, tapping Willas' crutches with the heavy emerald ring on her finger. "I assume it's broken?"

"Not badly," he said, teasingly defensive. "I managed to convince him to let me watch Garlan ride before he sets it – do stop fussing, Marg! It's hardly the first time I've broken a bone, is it?"

Margaery rolled her eyes again and patted his cheek affectionately. They reminded Sansa of herself and Jon, somehow, she thought, not realising that she was tucking Jon's furs closer around his neck until he swatted her hand away with a sigh of amused exasperation and a fond smile.

"Dearest, most accident-prone brother," Margaery sighed. "Do try to be more careful, won't you?"

* * *

Joy winked across at Quentyn, enjoying the way he squirmed in discomfort – or was it embarrassment? – before turning her attention back to what would hopefully be his uncle's final tilt – she was fond of old Selmy, and hoped that he might win against the Viper.

She still didn't truly see the appeal of jousting – it seemed to her that anyone who could ride well enough could excel at it, much preferring the melee as a show of skill – but the atmosphere was undeniable, and it was always such fun to watch Myrcella's reactions when her favourite knights fell.

Selmy was like something from a song, white armoured and white haired and so very calm, while the Viper languished at his end in black, two sides of the same coin – because they were near matched in skill, Joy thought, if not in anything else at all.

Quentyn, the dear, seemed more interested in watching her than watching his uncle, and so Joy decided that she was more interested in watching him than watching old Selmy, too.

* * *

Oberyn Martell and Garlan Tyrell fell to Barristan Selmy and the mystery knight, and Myrcella could hardly sit still with excitement as the two men readied for the final tilt.

Father, of course, was annoyed that the "Black Brother" had reached this late stage in the competition, but there was little he could do aside from sit with his chin resting on his fist and grumble under his breath.

They shattered lance after lance, riding so quickly that they were blurs of silver-white and gold-black, and Myrcella wondered how it was that neither of them had given in for sheer fatigue by now – Ser Barristan in particular, because wonderful knight though he undoubtedly was, he was an old man.

"A wager, Father?" she murmured, nudging him with her elbow and grinning. "If our Black Brother should be victorious, you allow me to arrange for envoys to Prince Aegon and Princess Daenerys, and you allow me to ask Lady Stark for the right to cloak Robb."

He looked at her, surprised, amused and annoyed in equal measure.

"Very well then," he said. "If Selmy wins, you do not argue with me again for the rest of council, and I may marry you off to whoever I wish."

They shook hands and sealed it with a draught of his ale, and then Myrcella sat back with her hands folded together, sinking into her furs as best she could.

It was a risk, but she'd watched the mystery knight more closely than Father had. She trusted that the man who had asked her favour-

* * *

The crowd didn't seem to know whether to cheer or not when Barristan Selmy was sent flying from his saddle, but every man who'd competed across the two days roared for the Black Brother to remove his helm.

Robb and Jon had been deep in rapid conversation for several minutes before the final run, and Sansa had heard Prince Tommen mentioned more than once – but then he appeared in the lists to help Ser Barristan to his feet with a smile and it seemed their postulating was for naught.

The knight accepted the crown for the Queen of Love and Beauty, deep red poinsettia, trailing streams of ivy and crenulations of spikey holly, and turned to the royal box, tossing aside his lance and reaching for his helm with his free hand-

The shouts dwindled to silence as Brienne of Tarth, Lady of the Sapphire Isle, laid the crown in Princess Myrcella's lap.

"For the first Storm Queen in three centuries," she said, bowing her head. "A crown, and my sword in your hands, your highness."

Myrcella lifted the crown in long, slender fingers, the golden stag ring on her right hand glinting in the pale sunlight, and after inspecting in a moment longer, she set the crown on Brienne's head and smiled.

"For the finest knight in the realm!" she called, rising to her feet and dropping into a curtsy before Brienne. "I would be honoured to accept your sword, my lady!"

* * *

"Do you know, Lady Brienne," Myrcella said brightly, sitting at Brienne's side at table that night, "I think _blue _plate would be very handsome indeed on you – it would bring out the colour of your eyes most wonderfully."

Robert was unsure if he should be delighted or annoyed by Myrcella's turn of charm with the Beauty, but he knew Cersei disapproved and that alone was near enough to make him smile.

Myrcella had won their wager, alright, and she'd spent most of the evening before the feast with young Sansa Stark, bartering an agreement in exchange for young Robb's rights. He just hoped she hadn't signed away half the realm – the half the Starks didn't have domain over – for her Lord Protector.

Robert was amused at the idea that she thought he'd marry her to anyone else – he'd been half-planning on arranging a match between her and young Robb almost since she was born, although he'd said it to no one but Jon. Robert doubted there was anything about him Jon Arryn didn't know.

The meal was an extravagance, but considering it had suddenly become Myrcella's betrothal feast Robert couldn't quite find it in himself to care. She was enjoying it immensely, and even if the way her eyes kept sliding along the table to the grey-and-white mass of Starks was the furthest thing from subtle imaginable, nobody else seemed to have noticed, really, even those bastards who'd started whispering all sorts of things about Myrcella's virtue.

The food was cleared away slowly, leaving only plates of fruit and flagons of ale and wine on the tables, and Robert decided it was time to make the announcement – before he was too drunk to stand.

* * *

Sansa managed to avoid Joffrey Baratheon when the dancing began in the wake of the King's announcement, and settled herself firmly at Willas' side.

"It is a pity you cannot dance tonight," she said softly, resting her hand on his knee for just a moment. His lower leg was encased in hard plaster, and according to Margaery he would be on crutches for some weeks, but at least he would heal. She had worried that he would not, after that fall of his. "I was so looking forward to dancing with you."

He blushed, watching her fingers tap against his kneecap, and swallowed.

"Mayhaps… Mayhaps you might visit Highgarden, my lady, and once my leg is healed I will dance with you until you can dance no more."

Sansa smiled and leaned closer.

"I should like that very much," she assured him, "but I fear I shan't leave Winterfell again until Princess Myrcella's coronation and her wedding to my brother, unless her highness can prevail upon me as one of her envoys."

"My lady?"

"You know that she wishes to send people to treat with the Targaryens? Well, she would like for myself and my sister to be among the number – I have refused, but Myrcella will be Myrcella, after all, and she may very well order me outright onto a ship at White Harbour. You know how she is."

He frowned.

"I should not like for you to go," he said, not quite managing to meet her eyes. "The last Lady of Winterfell did not do well with Targaryens, after all."

"I am touched by your concern-"

"I would not like to see any harm come to you," he said, lifting his head at last and smiling shyly. "It would- I would not like it."

He frowned as if at himself and sighed suddenly.

"I am usually much more eloquent, my lady, but I fear I find myself tongue-tied with you at all times," he fumed. "Do forgive me-"

"There is nothing to forgive," she said firmly. "I am thoroughly sick of endless sweet words – honesty is much more endearing."

He smiled once more, and conversation was easier from there on.

* * *

Arya danced with what seemed like every young man in the hall and then some of them again – but she never danced with Quentyn Martell, not even once, because he and Joy Lannister spent the entire night in each other's arms.

Quentyn's brother was much better looking, much more charming and much, much wittier, but he was also quite clearly in love with Ned Dayne – a feeling that was apparently reciprocated, if Arya was any judge, although Arya was fairly certain that Ned at least was as open to feminine charms as masculine – and so, with him not attempting to look down her unfortunately under filled bodice all of the time, he was excellent company.

"Your uncle and sister are unhappy with your brother," she murmured, smiling just enough to prevent anyone else from noticing how serious she was being. "I can see why."

Trystane shrugged easily and smiled just a touch wider than her.

"It's good to see Quent happy," he said. "He's so fixated on doing the right thing all of the time that he's quite the bore, you know. I imagine part of my uncle's problem is that Quent is quite suddenly the most scandalous member of House Martell, a title Oberyn has borne with aplomb for many years."

Arya laughed, caught Ned's eye as he spun past with one of the Tarlys, and winked – he winked back, and she laughed even harder.

* * *

Myrcella managed to get away for just a moment, standing in the freezing night and shivering for lack of furs or cloak, but she put up with it because she needed to _breathe, _away from Mother and Grandfather and everyone wishing to congratulate her and-

A cloak settled around her shoulders, smelling of cedar, far too long for her.

"Hello, love," she sighed, leaning back into Robb's arms with a smile, closing her eyes as he pulled her closer. "Did you find the heat stifling, too?"

"I am of Winterfell," he murmured, brushing a kiss over her temple. "Everything south of the Neck is stifling for me."

"Then you shall surely melt if you are to spend the rest of your days at King's Landing," she said, closing her hands over his wrists. "Will you be happy?"

"If I'm with you? Of course, Cella – why do you need to ask?"

* * *

"Do you know," Ned said to Robert, flush with ale for the second time in as many weeks, "I think this may be the best decision Sansa has made in her time as Lady of Winterfell!"

* * *

Joy staggered back when Genna's hand whipped over her cheek, clutching her face and attempting to find the words to protest.

"How _dare _you shame yourself by dancing with that- that- that _Dornish snake _all night!" Genna shrieked, advancing once more and subsiding only when Tywin laid a careful hand on her arm.

"I'm sure Jocelyn knows better now," he said quietly, eyes colder than the wind rising outside. "Don't you, Jocelyn?"

She ducked her head.

"Yes, Uncle," she said softly. "I am sorry, Aunt."

Genna's rage faded, but as soon as Joy was certain that both her aunt and uncle were firmly abed, she slipped out of their apartments and made her way to the library.

She had an appointment to keep, after all, and although it was not explicitly to meet Quentyn, she still could not afford to miss it.

* * *

"We'll still be caught," Jon whispered as Sansa pulled him along behind her by the hand. "Sansa, if Father discovers you've been plotting with the princess-"

"Father can go hang," she said crossly. "Do you know what he and Mother asked me earlier? _What do you intend doing with that Tyrell boy? _I told them I intend marrying him, and of _course _Father began telling me once more that Harrion Karstark is a good man-"

"Shut up, Sansa," Robb laughed, pushing her ahead of him and shaking his head. "We'll never get to the library at this rate – hurry up!"

* * *

Myrcella and Tommen arrived in the library together, and were amazed to find Shireen and Sweetrobin standing together over an enormous book, frowning down at the illuminations in the poor light.

Sweetrobin looked up and acknowledged their arrival with a nod and a smile, his skin slightly less sickly-pale than usual, but Shireen only shushed them and looked harder at the book on the table before them.

"Aha!" she exclaimed, pointing not at the illumination but at the dense columns of text on the opposite page. "I told you, Robert, I told you – _and thus were the Houses Targaryen and Baratheon joined in the marriage of Orys, brother of the Conqueror, and Myrcella, Queen of Storm's End. _I told you Orys the Bastard was legitimised before he married the last Myrcella!"

The current Myrcella cleared her throat.

"Might I ask why this came up?"

"We arrived early and have been considering possible ploys to bring the Targaryens to peace," Sweetrobin explained, clenching his left hand into a fist when it began to tremble. Myrcella and Tommen politely looked away – Sweetrobin, for all his faults, was fiercely prideful when it came to his illness, and hated to have it acknowledged. "Harry and Devan are gone for more books, I believe – Shireen has an admirable memory, but I still doubt certain of her precedents."

Myrcella raised an eyebrow as Harry Hardyng, Sweetrobin's cousin and heir, appeared from the stacks with a pile of books towering in his arms, followed closely by Devan Seaworth, the Onion Knight's son who had squired for Shireen's father. He and Shireen had always been good friends, she knew, although that had never been so confusing as Shireen's enduring fondness for Sweetrobin Arryn, the pedantic, whiney little shit that he could be.

Still, he was heir to the Vale, and far too honourable to ever tell anyone about their council if sworn to secrecy. He was a worthy ally to have.

The rest of their allies began to trickle in – Sansa, Jon and Robb, Arya and Bran, all four Tyrells, Joy, Quentyn and Trystane Martell, Shireen, and Sweetrobin were the most important aside from Renly, who of course was late, but they all brought a handful of companions. Their gathering would form the pool from whence would come the envoys who would treat with the Targaryens – any who had fought in or ruled during the Rebellion had refused outright to be part of what they called "the princess' scheme," and had petitioned Father to end it before it could begin, and so they were meeting under cover of darkness.

Renly arrived almost half an hour after everyone else, and after much sniping from Myrcella, they began planning.

* * *

"I would like to go as a member of the party," Sweetrobin said, finally looking up from the book in his lap. "Either party, but I should like to go, if I may."

"Why should you be the one to go?" Quentyn asked – Myrcella had half a mind to send him, because his steady, quiet manner meant he had yet to offend anyone at all, no mean feat considering Joy, Arya and herself were at the table. "I do not mean to dismiss you, Lord Robert, but-"

"When Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros, he came to the Vale before anywhere else," Sweetrobin said calmly. "We follow the same inheritance laws as House Targaryen – we are the only ones who do. I might appeal to Princess Daenerys to make her see that Prince Aegon does technically have right of ascension ahead of her-"

"We are not trying to negotiate between the Targaryens," Myrcella said sharply. "We are trying to convince them not to invade the Seven Kingdoms, Robert."

"If you had let me finish, your highness," he said sourly, rolling his eyes, "I was about to point out that, as far as we can gather, Prince Aegon seems the more reasonable of the two, and-"

Here he glanced to Shireen, who nodded.

"And may be appeased by the promise of Dragonstone and your heir for his, Princess."

Myrcella blinked dumbly, looking from Sweetrobin to Shireen to Robb and back again.

"That is why you were looking at marriage records between House Targaryen and House Baratheon," she said faintly. "You want me to sell my daughter?"

"Not sell her," Shireen said, tone placating. "Guarantee peace for her, Cella – think about it! If we somehow manage to convince Daenerys Targaryen that she has enough with her empire in Essos, this may be the best way to deal with Aegon – no bloodshed, no war. Your daughter will have a husband of noble blood, and a realm over which to rule."

"When did you have time to plan this?" Arya asked, astonished. "This is not the work of a few hours, Shireen."

"Robert and I began discussing possibilities as soon as Uncle Robert began talking of sailing to Pentos and hurling wildfire at Prince Aegon's steadily growing army before turning to Slaver's Bay and doing the same to Princess Daenerys. It makes sense, even you must see that, Myrcella."

"And what of you?" Myrcella demanded. "You will give up Dragonstone?"

"If I am freed of my obligations as heir to Dragonstone, I am automatically the new heir to Storm's End as the only eligible female of the Baratheon line," Shireen said calmly. "Which will remove Joffrey from a position of power, I remind you, and lessen your mother and grandfather's influence on the realm somewhat, which is no bad thing."

"Whatever of my mother," Myrcella said, temper flaring, "my grandfather has been a more than capable Warden of the West-"

"Cella," Tommen cautioned, patting the back of her hand and shaking his head slightly. "Enough. Shireen has the right of it – don't lose sight of that with your temper, hmm?"

Robb folded his arms, frowning just slightly.

"Our daughter would still be Queen in her own right when the time comes?" he asked. "She would still be a Baratheon?"

Shireen and Sweetrobin exchanged an uneasy glance, and then Sweetrobin sighed.

"We will have to negotiate on that point with Prince Aegon," he admitted. "It is likely he will want the royal family restored to the name of Targaryen, but we will do everything in our power to convince him otherwise."

"And if he will not marry his daughter to the granddaughter of a Baratheon, a Lannister, a Stark and a Tully?" Sansa asked, biting her lip, fretting. "It is not an ideal scenario for the child of a Targaryen and a Martell, you must admit."

"He is unmarried himself," Shireen pointed out. "We find a wife for him, someone of suitably high birth who is _not _ofan old Targaryen or Martell bannerhouse – I mean no offence, your highnesses, but it may be better to broaden his horizons, as it were."

Quentyn and Trystane were frowning, but not at any perceived insult in Shireen's words.

"One of us should be part of the envoy to Aegon," Quentyn said, acknowledging his brother's eager nod of agreement with a small smile. "We are his cousins, after all."

"My father will not accept you," Myrcella admitted uneasily, twisting her ring. "He will insist that you will turn your cloaks – I know that you will not, but he _did _leave the men who murdered your aunt and cousin alive, and he fears retribution."

"Which is not to speak of my aunt and uncle," Joy agreed. "If only there were-" She shook her head. "I do not think any Martell and Lannister will ever be capable of trusting one another, not after what Tywin ordered."

"I will swear whatever oaths are necessary," Quentyn said seriously. "But I mean to be a member of the party that goes to him. It may help earn his trust, to think that his family are not entirely opposed to a Baratheon queen."

Myrcella considered this, and nodded.

"We will think on what oaths might convince my father and those who agree with him," she promised. "You will go to Prince Aegon – but what of Princess Daenerys? I would go myself, but-"

"She is as likely to have her dragons burn you alive as she is to speak with you," Joy noted dryly. "And the same for myself, and for any Stark or Arryn. A Tyrell probably has the best chance – your father remained loyal to the end, didn't he?"

Margaery looked between her brothers.

"I cannot go myself," she said, sounding as annoyed as Myrcella had at not being able to go to Daenerys, "and Garlan is soon to be married, as," she added, grinning openly at Sansa, "I suspect, is Willas. Loras…?"

He shrugged.

"I have never pretended to have our grandmother's or uncle's… Admirable political skill, but I will go if you so wish, sister."

Sansa and Willas both were staring determinedly at the table, and Myrcella smiled just slightly at her soon-to-be goodsister's embarrassment.

"So we have Prince Quentyn and Lord Robert to go to Prince Aegon, Ser Loras to go to Princess Daenerys…?"

"One of us should go," Robb said. "A Stark, I mean. Not to Prince Aegon, but mayhaps I might go with Loras-"

"No," Myrcella said, a flat denial. "You and I are to marry in just over five moons time, you twit – do you realise the sheer level of _training _you will have to do? You will barely have time to sleep, much less go on a months-long journey to Slaver's Bay."

"Myrcella is right," Sansa agreed, folding her hands together. "And I cannot go – there is trouble at the Wall, and I must be in Winterfell to deal with the Watch. Bran is still squiring with Uncle Brynden, and…" She looked to her left, to Jon. "You know, you're very _nearly _a Stark, brother."

Jon blinked at her, startled.

"Sansa, we've had this conversation before," he said firmly. "You do not need to legitimise me-"

"But then you could be one of the emissaries!" she exclaimed. "And Mother wouldn't constantly _bother _me about finding someone willing to take on my bastard brother as a lord protector, either! Oh, do let me legitimise you, Jon, I've wanted to for _years _and you kept saying no-"

Jon's frown turned to a scowl.

"I will not allow you to legitimise just because the way your mother treats me bothers you," he told her. "Lady Tully has every right to despise me-"

"Oh, shut up the pair of you," Myrcella said tiredly, rubbing her temples. "Sansa, we will arrange for you to legitimise Jon in the morning, and he can be part of the group bound for Slaver's Bay. Do we have any more volunteers?"

* * *

By the time they finished for the night, it was well past midnight and every one of them was staggering with tiredness – but Margaery still caught Jon's wrist hard enough to bruise and pulled him away from the others without a word of explanation.

"She has offered to legitimise you before and you _refused?!" _she demanded, herding him back against a tall bookcase, crowding so close to him that she could smell the warm, woodsy scent of his neck, see the silver in his dark, dark eyes. "You _refused, _Jon bloody honourable Snow?!"

He was panicking, that much was obvious, but she didn't care, she was so _blindingly _furious that she absolutely did not care an inch.

"You told me that you could not ask the Lady of Highgarden to marry a bastard, but your sister offered to legitimise you – which would make you _entirely _worthy of my colours and name – and you refused her? I don't understand, Jon! I thought- I hoped that you felt the same!"

"I did – I do, Margaery, I do, but I couldn't expect Sansa to legitimise me, not when my being her sworn sword already puts so much strain on her relationship with her mother!"

"But what about me?" Margaery pleaded, completely unhinged by the notion of him not wanting her enough to accept legitimisation, unable to control herself – she would be ashamed, embarrassed, in the morning, but right now all she wanted to do was make Jon feel as terrible as she felt herself. "If you wanted me, why didn't you accept Sansa's offer? You _know _that a brother of the Lady of Winterfell is a suitable match for the Lady of Highgarden-"

"Would you still want me if I wasn't forbidden to you?"

"What kind of _stupid _question-"

"Answer me, Margaery – if I weren't forbidden to you, would you still want me? If I hadn't been the Bastard of Winterfell when we met, would you have chased me as you did?"

"I- Yes, of course! Jon-"

"If I accept Sansa's offer, then, will you ask for my rights? Or will you lose interest?"

She slapped him, horrible, furious rage burning in her gut, and gathered up her skirts so she could run away from him before he could see her tears.

Her brothers were waiting at the doors of the library, and Loras nodded to Garlan and Willas before half-carrying her back to their apartments, where she promptly threw an enormous tantrum because she _would not _cry for Jon Snow.

* * *

"You can't go," Tommen said as he and Myrcella broke their fast with Renly and Shireen the following morning, "and only a fool would trust Joff to go to this Mother of Dragons, but why shouldn't I? I'm as much a prince of the Iron Throne as he is, I'm an anointed knight, I'm less likely to insult someone to the point of violence, and there's nothing at all to keep me here, really. I'm no one's heir, I'm sworn to no one – it makes sense that the Queen-to-be's brother go as an ambassador, doesn't it?"

"You want to go to Daenerys Targaryen?" Myrcella asked, astonished. The idea of Tommen wanting to commit to such an undertaking was… Well, it was something of a surprise. A very large surprise. "But… Tommen, _why?"_

"I would like to be useful to you," he said simply, and though she could see that there was something else bothering him, she did not press him – she would ask again when they were alone. She hated when something was bothering Tommen. "This is one way in which I can do that. There are few enough avenues open to the second son-"

"You are my heir," she pointed out, horrified at the thought of Tommen being away from her for so long – it had been bad enough agreeing to sending him to _Aegon _Targaryen in Pentos, never mind Daenerys in Meereen. She could never remember Tommen having been away for more than a day or two – the idea of not seeing him for weeks, months, was terrifying. Who was she supposed to turn to when she had a secret, when she needed advice?

"Cella, you will be marrying Robb before we leave," he said. "In all likelihood, and with the gods' will, you will no longer have need of me as your heir by the time I return from treating with the Dragon Queen."

* * *

_"Tommen _wants to go to Slaver's Bay? And _Sweetrobin_ is to be part of the envoy_?"_

"And Prince Quentyn – and Lady Stark intends to legitimise her half-brother, and he will be going, as will Ser Loras Tyrell."

"But _Sweetrobin? _Will his health allow it? Will his _mother?" _

Myrcella stood with her chin up and almost refused to blink.

"Lord Robert says that he will be perfectly able to travel, provided he has ample supplies of his medicine, and that he is more concerned with what Uncle Stannis will say than what Lady Arryn will."

Robert scowled at the thought of Stannis, who had fostered Sweetrobin since he was six, and motioned for Myrcella to go on.

"We are fully aware that it is impossible that the Targaryens will simply go away, but we are willing to appease them to avoid open warfare – Shireen has offered her inheritance of Dragonstone and the Crownlands to be given to Prince Aegon when Uncle Stannis' day comes, which will make her-"

"No!" he snapped, rising to his feet and clenching his fists. "No Targaryen will ever rule in Westeros again-"

"It may be the only way to save our people, Father," she broke in firmly. "Will you please listen to sense? I did not want to hear it either, but Shireen and Sweetrobin have the right of it – we _must _be willing to make sacrifices if we are to keep the peace. We _must."_

* * *

**AN: **I don't think I've made it very clear, but it is winter here – the Wall is holding atm but it and the White Walkers will, eventually, feature. I haven't forgotten that I included them in the summary, don't worry.

But yeah: Winter.

Um. Think that's everything.

OH! There'll eventually be a shout out to Discworld – specifically Lord Vetinari, as seen by Moist von Lipwig in _Going Postal_ – in a later chapter, and I'm giving you the heads up now because I'm curious as to how many will pick up on it.

THAT'S everything.


	6. Solemnly Sworn Vows

**AN: **MARGAERY IS SO FUCKING HARD TO WRITE I MEAN REALLY HOW RUDE.

At least with Sansa and Arya and Shireen I can point to inconsistencies and shout AU! AU!, and Myrcella just has to be spunky, and Joy's pretty much an OC, but with Margaery it's like "Well she wouldn't actually be changed that much by this" and HOW DAMNED RUDE so she's just enormously OOC and I AM SORRY OKAY.

Anyways. Enjoy.

* * *

It snowed on the first day of the third week of council, and Myrcella sprinted back into the castle proper from the baths with Shireen, bundled up in furs and with her wet hair wrapped in a thick shawl to prevent it from freezing solid.

"Gah," she gasped, disgusted, as she unwound the shawl and used it to roughly wipe her face dry. "I _loathe _snow."

Shireen smiled faintly and gathered her cloak closer around herself as she made her way deeper inside, making for the stairs with a tired sigh.

"The maesters think we may have another year or two of winter yet," she warned, not waiting for Myrcella to follow her and therefore forcing her cousin to run to catch up. "They say that by rights, we should already be seeing signs of spring, but if anything, the air is colder."

"And you are in regular contact with the Citadel?" Myrcella sniped, grumpier than usual because of the trickles of icy water spilling down her back from her hair.

"I am, actually," Shireen told her serenely. "The Archmaesters take a great interest in my scars – few who contracted greyscale in infanthood survived, and few of those who did lived past ten or twelve. I have friends in the Citadel." Shireen smiled again, tucking her hair back behind her ear. "Friends are wonderful things, Myrcella – you might think of making some other than Margaery Tyrell. You will have need of them in the days to come."

Myrcella stopped, right there in the middle of the stairs, and frowned.

"What do you mean, I might think of making friends? I have plenty of friends-"

"I used Margaery as an example. Can you name one woman you call a friend who is not either lady of one of the Seats or heir to a Seat?"

* * *

"My, my, Ser Stark. Is reading a knightly endeavour?"

Jon looked up and smiled at Margaery, leaning against the edge of the nearest bookcase. He was relieved that she hadn't tried to see him in his rooms – she'd done it before, when they'd been at King's Landing together all that time ago – and stood to greet her.

"My lady."

Margaery smiled that scheming, wickedly clever little smile that never failed to set his hair on end and make his mouth go dry, and came closer.

"I had the most interesting conversation with your sister. There was a septon present, too, and Sansa mentioned something about solemnly releasing you from your vows as her shield and sword and sworn protector, the better to entrust you into my care and my home as _my _shield and sword and sworn protector, just as soon as I can drape a cloak of green-and-gold around your shoulders and lay a sword across your hands," she said, tracing a finger along the line of his nose, grinning when she came to the bump where Theon had broken it during a drunken fit of sullen anger. "I shall need to know what height you are, Ser Jon, else I may make your cloak too long or too short. Do be sure to stop by my rooms this evening – my lady grandmother is _so _looking forward to meeting you."

Jon stared after her, dumbfounded, and it was a full count of twenty before he ran from the library, calling her name and wondering if he'd imagined the entire thing.

* * *

Sansa, who had waited patiently at the library doors while Margaery shared the news with Jon, was currently sprinting through the halls with her skirts hiked up in one hand and Margaery's wrist clasped in the other.

"Sansa, slow down!" Margaery laughed, holding up her own skirts and trying to throw back her hair as she ran in Sansa's wake. "He shan't have moved too far-"

They skidded to a halt outside the maester's chambers, Jon's shouts echoing with their footsteps, and Margaery threw back her head and laughed – her composure had slipped most terribly in all her dealings with the Starks since council had begun, but she couldn't quite bring herself to care, not when she was _finally _getting her hands on Jon.

Sansa took a moment to compose herself, straightening her hair and skirts and looking as though she had walked here at a leisurely pace rather than sprinted right from the other side of the castle, and knocked on the door.

"Lady Stark!" the maester said, surprised to see her. "And Lady Tyrell, too – how may I help you, my ladies?"

"My brother is with you, I believe, maester," Margaery said, patting her own hair into place and smiling at the sound of Jon's boots skidding on the smooth stone floor as he rounded the corner. "Lady Stark and I have business with him, if we may detain him for a few moments?"

"I shall wait next door, if it please you, my lady," the ferrety little man said with a small, queasy smile. _From the Vale, then, _Margaery thought, _and still uncomfortable bowing to women. _

He stepped aside, and Sansa brushed into his rooms with so much dignity that it was almost possible to ignore the flaming blush in her cheeks.

Almost.

"Margaery-"

"Hush now, Jon," she berated him teasingly. "Sansa must speak with my brother. It would be deplorably bad manners to interrupt."

Willas had risen to his feet – ignoring his still broken and freshly casted leg – as soon as he saw that it was Sansa come to visit him, and Margaery and Jon maintained a respectful distance as Sansa took Willas' hands, smiling so wide she was on the verge of laughing, and after she'd said the words twice, Willas having made her repeat them so as to be sure he'd heard her correctly, he let out a great triumphant _"HA!"_ and, once more uncaring of his leg, gathered her up in his arms and spun her around before kissing her so soundly that Margaery felt the need to turn away – so did Jon, of course, but Margaery did not blush the way he did.

"You did not react so enthusiastically," she mused, face serene. "Do I displease you as a bride, Ser Jon?"

Jon swallowed, shook his head, and then laughed.

"Wicked woman," he chuckled, pulling her close and pressing his face into her hair as they laughed together.

* * *

"The only Houses that can possibly be in doubt, even in the King's eyes, are Martell and Greyjoy," Shireen said, scratching the side of her nose with the end of her pen and frowning. "Tell me, Robert, can you think of anyone willing to marry Asha Greyjoy?"

"Or her brother," Sweetrobin considered. "Their father has named him heir, remember, the motives for which I have still not puzzled out, no matter how many ways the problem is presented to me. It is bothersome, Shireen. I dislike not understanding people's motives."

"We could always send Tommen to Pyke," Shireen said, amused at the thought. "He might enjoy leaving his wife to do everything for him, considering by all reports Lady Asha already acts as her father's Lord Protector in all but name. Give Tommen a book and a cat and the means to visit Myrcella, and he will be quite happy."

Sweetrobin murmured neither in agreement nor denial, but he did not look up from the web of lines he had drawn out, showing the marriage alliances between the Great Houses and their more powerful bannerhouses for the past three generations. His parents and hers both were marked on it, as were Catelyn Tully and Ned Stark, the King and Queen, and, more importantly than many would have warranted, Elia Martell and Rhaegar Targaryen.

"This dual alliance between the Starks and the Tyrells complicates things," he lamented, running a hand through his hair. He wore a heavy silver ring, a thick band engraved with a stream of tiny, delicate falcons, on his thumb, and he frowned when it caught just at his temple. "I had hoped we might encourage Sansa to marry her brother… Elsewhere. There was never any doubt that we might convince her to legitimise him, of course, and her and Willas Tyrell's sudden fondness for one another was an unforeseen but entirely welcome turn of events, but Jon might have been useful."

"He's pretty enough to tempt Asha Greyjoy, from what I've heard of her tastes," Shireen agreed. "Although had Sansa not become so suddenly smitten with Willas, there was always a chance, no matter how slim, that we might have convinced her to wed Theon Greyjoy, which would leave Asha as de facto heir to Pyke…"

"She would never have married Theon," Sweetrobin disagreed. "She sees him as another brother, I think, and she is far from a Targaryen. Damn it anyways. Marriages are such a _messy _way to seal alliances – would that there was some other bond your uncle would trust."

"We still have not mentioned the Martells, my friend. Joy Lannister will never be allowed to marry Prince Quentyn, so all their flirting will be for naught unless she gives him her maidenhead and he gets a child on her or something else so extreme. Uncle Robert is unconvinced that your uncle's marriage to Princess Arianne will be sufficient to bind the Martells closer to the crown, and thus we are at a stalemate of sorts."

"Had Arya not become so adept at reading relationships thanks to Uncle Edmure, we might have helped Prince Trystane hide his affection for Lord Dayne from her and sealed the Martells to the throne through a dual marriage to the Tullys." He sighed heavily, running his hand through his hair once more to try and hide the tremor in his fingers. "What are we to do, Shireen? Father is despairing of the King's open dislike of the Martells and his refusal to accept how dangerous they are."

* * *

"Princess Arianne, if you do not retract that statement, you will be removed from the council chambers and refused entrance for the rest of our time here!"

They said that the King wore the crown and the Hand ruled – they said much ruder things, too, but they were unnecessary, Sansa thought – and so it was that it fell to Jon Arryn to finally take the Martells and Lannisters in hand when they're constant bickering and fighting simply got out of hand. Princess Arianne could not be allowed to openly call Lord Tywin a child killer and a slayer of innocents, even if it was true, not any more than Genna Lannister could be allowed to call Prince Oberyn a pox-ridden whore with no integrity and no morals, even if that were true by certain standards, too. Lady Lannister had screamed her indignation the whole way out of the chamber when she was removed.

Sansa had spent an evening at table in Prince Oberyn's company, and even though she suspected that Willas had acted as a buffer and had censored his friend somewhat, she still thought that the dreaded legend of the Red Viper seemed grossly exaggerated compared to the reality of Oberyn Martell. He was certainly more charming than she'd been expecting, and a great deal more clever.

Quite frankly, Sansa would much prefer to have him at her side than she would any Lannister save Joy and mayhaps the Imp, who had also joined them at table that night and had made her laugh so hard that she'd had to rely on Willas' arm around her waist to keep her from falling off the bench – Mother had resigned herself to Sansa's betrothal, but she had disapproved quite strongly of such an open display of affection, and it had taken Father's gentlest nudging and Edmure's bawdiest teasing to make her relent.

It was open council for this, their final week at Harrenhall, meaning that everyone with an interest was welcome to take a place on the pews that had been brought into the hall. The storm that had been brewing between the Martells and Lannisters had drawn greater crowds than might have been expected, and Sansa, standing by the wall with Arya, Robb, Jon, and Edmure, winced as the two Houses faced one another and rowed like children.

"They should be ashamed of themselves," Edmure sighed, scowling quite openly across at Arianne – Sansa could not blame him, for she knew that she would be just as embarrassed to see her betrothed behaving like a fishwife. "This is no way to honour Princess Elia and Princess Rhaenys' memories. No matter how the Lannisters behaved, until the King moves against the Mountain and Lorch, there is nothing the Martells can do save keep petitioning him for justice, which he will not give them. They know this. Why will they not accept it and bide their time until the Princess takes the throne?"

"Because they don't trust her," Robb murmured. "She's half a Lannister, remember, and her father is that same King who has denied them their bloodright all these years."

Arianne stormed from the hall, her youngest brother with her, and Sansa saw Edmure's scowl deepen.

"I should go after her," he said quietly. "But I won't. She brought this on herself. Let her suffer the consequences – her father has coddled her so entirely that she has never had to face up to her mistakes, or at least very rarely. This may do her good."

* * *

"None of them trust us!" Quentyn fumed, showing more open emotion than he had since Joy had met him. "Gods, how can they think that we would- well, yes, I understand how they might think that we would betray them for Aegon, but _gods, _do they truly think that we will slaughter innocents? We are not _Lannisters!"_

"Luckily for you, I still consider myself a Hill," Joy said coolly, raising an eyebrow in askance and waiting for his cheeks to darken with embarrassment. "Not to worry – I will not take offence on my uncle's behalf, dear Quentyn. I am surprised that Ser Edmure's marriage to your sister has not appeased the King, though. I was sure that marrying a Tully would lend House Martell some measure of trust from the crown, but alas, it is not to be, it would seem."

"It is never to be," Quentyn said ominously. "Even if he will rescind his order that I am not to be a member of the envoy to Prince Aegon, he will never actually trust any Dornishman – it is as if he blames the whole of Dorne for Prince Rhaegar holding Lyanna Stark in the Red Mountains. He does not forget, and he will not forgive. We are in an impossible position."

"Were he a religious man, he might trust vows sworn on the Warrior. Or the Stranger – even those who are not religious take vows sworn on the Stranger seriously, I have always noticed, but the King does not seem to think death a worthy concern, unless it is in his crippling fear of Myrcella's being premature."

* * *

"There seems naught but betrothals," Ned agreed, frowning into his cup. "Jon, Robb, Sansa… Arya will be next. I wonder if she'd marry your Tommen, make two matched sets of it?"

Robert laughed, clapping Ned on the back.

"I've talked to Cat about it," he admitted with a grin, "but it seems your girl hardly knows that the lad exists."

"Oh, she knows him alright," Ned huffed. "Tommen is one of the best swords in the realm – Arya has always been half-obsessed with fighting. Besides, he and Bran are friends, and there is little Bran does that does not have to first meet with Arya's approval."

"Close, are they? Like Tommen and Myrcella."

"Like Lya and Benjen," Ned agreed. "If he weren't Lord of Starfall and unlikely to give up his birthright to stand as her Lord Protector, I'd think Arya sweet on Edric Dayne."

"A _Dornishman?!"_

"He _is _the Sword of the Morning," Ned pointed out. "And she has always been half-obsessed with fighting."

* * *

Arya had as much interest in marrying Ned Dayne as she had in marrying Tommen Baratheon or Trystane Martell or any of Genna Lannister's sons or Elmar Frey or anyone else who'd been held up as a potential suitor, and so it was that she spent the following afternoon, once council had closed for the day, in the training yard with her dancing instructor, dressed in thick woollen shirt and leggings and soft boots, uncaring of the spectacle she was presenting because she, unlike Sansa, did not care a jot about her looks.

"A boy could move faster," Syrio called mockingly, ducking under her cutting swipe with a smile. "A boy could strike more surely."

"A man could feel the cold," she groused, trying to stop her arms shivering and wondering how it was that Syrio never seemed to notice the weather, be it raining or snowing or freezing. "A man could stop talking."

"A boy could stop showing off," he sniped back, whipping his lathe around so quickly she hardly saw it, barely got her own up in time to deflect the blow. "Ah, better. Syrio will attack, then."

And he did – he was merciless, and she was only glad that it would not be warm enough for short sleeve gowns at the closing feast, because she would be a mass of bruises from her crown to her heels.

Well, mayhaps she did care about her looks a _little, _but she would never admit that to anyone, even Sansa.

The thought of confiding in Sansa was still something of a novelty, so Arya frowned and refocused on Syrio and his devilishly quick practice sword. If she wasn't watching what she was doing, she might fail to move away at all, and more than once he'd broken her skin with a particularly sharp smack, even through her shirt.

* * *

"Why should we argue against sending ambassadors to Prince Aegon and Princess Daenerys? If we might avoid bloodshed or the realm burning, I can see no problems."

Leyton Hightower, Lord Protector of Oldtown and speaking in his daughter's name at council, shrugged despite the disbelieving eyes many of his contemporaries fixed upon him at this pronouncement.

"Consider this," he said. "The last time we went to war with Targaryens, hundreds died, and then, there were no dragons, no Golden Company, no Lannisters for much of the fighting. The realm has not been so prosperous in years – and I would know, for I am older than most of you – and I, for one, should like to see it remain thus. Send envoys to the exiles. It might be that there is some sense in them."

The Old Man of Oldtown smiled broadly and retook his seat, folding his arms and leaning slightly to his left to speak with his eldest son, Lord Baelor Rowan, and then right to speak to his second daughter, Lady Alerie Tyrell.

Myrcella noticed the way Grandfather's fist clenched for just a moment, and very carefully avoided catching his eye.

"Does anyone else share Lord Leyton's sentiments?" she called, raising her chin and looking as many people in the face as she could manage. Slowly, following the initial brief rush, they began to rise to their feet in assent of her plans. All of Houses Stark and Tully and many of their bannermen and women, most of the Reach, all of the Vale under Sweetrobin's surprisingly poisonous glare, mayhaps a third of the Dornish, many of the Stormlanders and Crownlanders.

None of the Westerlanders or Ironborn rose. Not a single one-

Save Rodrick Harlaw, Lord Greyjoy's goodbrother and the only man from the Iron Islands who had not threatened someone or other with a painful death for some perceived insult in their time at council. Myrcella smiled. She had seen the way many of the islanders looked to Lord Harlaw, who they called the Reader, for guidance in political matters, and his agreeing to the sending of envoys may just be enough to convince some of them.

"Who will we send?"

All eyes turned on the Lord of Runestone – Bronze Yohn Royce was considered something of an eccentric, but he was an undeniably intelligent man and could generally be relied upon for unexpected insights.

"Lord Robert tells us he will go to Prince Aegon," he said, gesturing to Sweetrobin and bowing his head just slightly. "And we have heard other names mentioned, but the embassy cannot be made up only of green boys and pretty maids – I do not mean to cause offence, your highness, but if the envoy to Princess Daenerys arrives before you are crowned, it may look the work of a child acting behind her father's back if there are not some of us of a more mature persuasion in the group."

Myrcella smiled faintly – she had been expecting this – and nodded her permission for him to retake his seat.

"We had hoped to address this concern, Lord Royce," she agreed. "And would gladly accept volunteers-"

"I will go!"

Myrcella looked down at her uncle in shock, wondering how much of Tyrion's motivations lay in his ever-present desire to irritate Grandfather.

"Uncle?"

"Well, while mine is not the prettiest face of House Lannister, it is also the one which containing the mouth least likely to offend a Targaryen further than House Lannister has already," he said, eyes flickering to Grandfather and away, grin never slipping a mite. "And as the person who has travelled more in the Free Cities than any save a few in this room, I may prove invaluable. There is much that cannot be learned of Essos from books, of that I can assure you."

Myrcella looked to Shireen, who seemed as surprised by this turn of events as she was herself, and was relieved when Shireen shrugged. For all Tyrion's bluster and show, he was as trustworthy as any man and more so than most. Myrcella, at any rate, trusted him above any other Lannister save Joy and sometimes Jaime. And Mother, of course, but that went without saying.

She looked back to the room at large and smiled.

"And who will accompany my uncle, my brother, Ser Loras and Ser Jon on their trip to Slaver's Bay?"

* * *

"Arya, listen to reason-"

Sansa rested her hand on Arya's shoulder and straightened her spine.

"You have been asking us both to listen to reason constantly these past weeks, Mother," she said quietly. "Why should Arya not go to Pentos? House Tully will otherwise be unrepresented in the embassies-"

"She is my _heir! _What if something should happen to her?!" Mother exclaimed, looking as though she wished she could shake both of her daughters. "Riverrun-"

"Will pass to Bran," Arya said firmly. "And nothing shall happen to me, Mother. I will be so well guarded that I will hardly be able to breathe."

"You are going to treat with a Targaryen prince," Father said gently. "No Stark has ever done well with the Targaryens, Arya."

"Well that I am a Tully, then," she said stoutly. "I am going to Pentos, Mother, and you cannot stop me any more than Genna Lannister could prevent the Imp from going to Meereen."

* * *

"You will not set foot on that ship."

"I think you'll find, Father, that the will of the King and Crown Princess trumps that of the Lord Protector of the Westerlands. That means that I will set _feet _on that ship, and I shall wave goodbye as it sails the Narrow Sea for Slaver's Bay."

Tywin glowered down at Tyrion – and he always did ensure that he was standing at his tallest when arguing with Tyrion, the hateful old bastard – and Tyrion grinned.

"I shall be sure to bring you home a gift," he promised, and only the throbbing muscle in Tywin's jaw betrayed his fury. "Mayhaps a treaty with the Mother of Dragons and peace for your queenly granddaughter, or a husband who is not Dornish for my beloved cousin."

Tywin said nothing, and Tyrion grinned wider. Because he had been so fond of Gerion before his disappearance, Tyrion had a soft spot for Joy, which seemed to irk Tywin and Genna no end. No one else dared to indulge Joy, but Tyrion had long since given up on ever pleasing his father and so sought only to please himself.

"You will not go."

"Ah, my dearest niece will have something to say about that, my lord," Tyrion sighed. "Mayhaps you should speak with her of the matter?"

* * *

"Marriage will not be as blissful as you seem to think," Mother said, combing laboriously through Myrcella's thick curls with patient hands. She was always gentle and patient, provided Myrcella did not do anything to upset her, and even then she made certain to show her love. Mother's love was one of the few things Myrcella could never, ever imagine doubting, could never imagine failing her. Mother's love, and Father's and Tommen's and Renly's and Jaime's and Tyrion's and Robb's. Once she had those things, she would manage the rest.

"What do you mean?"

"You think that you will never fight," Mother said softly, parting Myrcella's hair into two and setting to work on braiding half for bed. "You think that he will defer to you as, in theory, he should. You think that you will love him as you do now for the rest of your life. I do not doubt that you will love him always, but be sure to steel yourself for disappointment."

"Robb will not disappoint me, Mother. He loves me as I love him."

"All men are disappointing," Mother said, shaking her head dismissively. "You are too young to know that, and you do not yet understand the myriad ways in which a man can be a disappointment, but you will. Remember what I say, sweetling – do not give all of your love to your wolf. Save it for your daughters, and for your sons."

Myrcella leaned back as she had since she was a child, smiling when Mother dropped her hair and wrapped her arms around Myrcella's shoulders. There was nothing alike in their faces, Myrcella thought, save mayhaps the shape of their cheekbones and their smiles, and although she knew that there had never been a Storm Queen with golden hair or green eyes, she had sometimes envied Joff his colouring and even Tommen, Tommen who was slowly growing into Renly, into Father as a young man, had that touch of green in his eyes.

"You will be the most beautiful woman in the world," Mother whispered conspiratorially, stroking her knuckles along Myrcella's jawline. "More beautiful than Sansa Stark or Margaery Tyrell or Arya Tully or even this Daenerys Targaryen. Men will throw themselves at your feet, and women will rage with jealousy. You must learn to use your beauty to control them – your bannerwomen, your courtiers, your small council, and your husband. It is a gift to have a face as fair as yours, my love, but it is also a weapon you must hone as carefully as you sharpen your wits."

Mother straightened up then and resumed her work on Myrcella's hair, but that small, secret smile never left her lips, that special, shared warmth never left her eyes.

"Your father will tell you stories of his great victories on the battlefield," Mother murmured, tying off the end of the first plait with a length of crimson ribbon pulled from her dressing table. "But listen more closely to your grandfather. He will tell you stories of his great victories in court, and they are of far more use to a Queen than any battlefield victory ever will be."

* * *

Snow lay thick on the ground, but Father still insisted on riding out without a guard. Jon had shrugged it off as nothing – Robb could remember them doing the same at Winterfell, before he'd come south to King's Landing – but Robb had his suspicions as to why Father was so eager to speak privately with them.

He was proved right when, a league out from the castle, Father drew them to a halt and frowned unhappily.

"You are both to be married within the year," he said briskly. "And it seems my children are determined to marry outside the North, but it cannot be helped. Tell me, do you love Lady Tyrell and the princess?"

"Of course," Jon said, quick as a shot, before blushing like a girl. "I have loved her for some time, Father."

"And I have loved Myrcella for as long as I understood what that meant," Robb agreed. "Why?"

Father frowned again, a different sort of frown this time, and sighed.

"I worry for you," he admitted. "Robb at least is used to life below the Neck, but Jon – you must understand how different things are in the Reach compared to at home."

"Father-"

* * *

"Choosing our envoys is much easier than I thought it might be," Sweetrobin noted, a hint of amusement in his voice belying the serious little frown creasing his forehead. He was drawing another web of marriages, this the tenth and final in the series – he had drawn one for each of the nine regions of the realm, detailing the marriages between the primary bannerhouses in each region to underpin the relationships laid out in the largest diagram, the original, that showed the Great Houses.

The list of volunteers, Myrcella had to admit, was shorter even than they had anticipated – they still needed three more ambassadors, two willing to go to Slaver's Bay and one for Pentos. Father had refused to authorise a third Dornishman to go to Prince Aegon, which had left them a name short.

"Mayhaps we should conscript someone," Shireen suggested, making a poor effort to hide her smile as she glanced across the table to Sweetrobin and Tommen. "Or offer some reward for going, or give whichever brother of the Kingsguard that is to accompany Tommen envoy status. I am somewhat at a loss, I admit – I had thought the lure of adventure would prove too much for at least a few more."

"What a craven nation are we," Sweetrobin murmured philosophically, his frown melting into a small smile. "Tell me, has Duram offered his services? I was certain he would leap at the chance to prove his worth somehow after his hand was crippled."

Duram Bar Emmon, Lord of Sharp Point, had spent much of his youth on Dragonstone. He was several years older than Sweetrobin, a year younger than Robb, and fiercely loyal to Stannis and, even more so, to Shireen.

"I shall find him in the morning and ask," Shireen promised. "I had rather expected that obnoxious bastard Ronnet Connington to come forward – it's _precisely _the kind of quest the fool always talks of going on."

Myrcella toyed with the length of string twisted around her fingers and frowned.

"I would not want him as part of the embassy," she said firmly. "He is crass and vulgar, and likely to offend before anyone else has a chance to appeal to either Targaryen. If he volunteers, find some excuse to refuse him."

"Uncle Kevan was the greatest surprise, I feel," Tommen said, head tipped back over one arm of his chair and his legs slung carelessly over the other. "Aunt Genna and Grandfather were livid. It was quite amusing."

"Joy thinks he hopes to find news of her father," Shireen said absently. "That is why he would so much rather go to Pentos than Slaver's Bay, apparently – he can track his brother's movements as far as the Free Cities, and hopes to discover where he went from there."

"Hm," Sweetrobin muttered, leaning closer to the book that had replaced the sheet of vellum on the table in front of him. "Hmm, I hadn't thought of _that."_

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing," he said, smiling at Myrcella. "Nothing at all."

* * *

Jon walked with Margaery just behind Sansa and Willas, telling her all about his interesting afternoon with Father and Robb.

"He tried to explain to me about married life," Jon laughed. "Robb and I both thought he was going to share some wisdom about coupling, but he started telling us of the best way to appease a woman when you can see that she's wrong and she won't accept it."

Margaery laughed with him, pressing closer to his side and resting her head against his shoulder.

"You should know, Jon, that I am _never _wrong," she teased. "Not ever. It is a trait that has always run strong in the women of House Tyrell."

"He also suggested giving our daughters Northern names."

Margaery hummed thoughtfully, lifting her free hand to tap her chin with the tip of a finger. Her gloves were leather of a purple so dark they were almost black, and matched her fur-lined boots. Margaery had teased that she would make sure that his gloves always matched his boots, and he'd laughed even as he'd worried that she was serious.

"Evanda Tyrell," she said. "It has a ring, I think. Mayhaps Willas and Sansa will call their first daughter Marelle, do you think?"

Jon chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"He suggested Lyanna, _actually," _he mocked. "And Evanda is a… A weighty name. I can't imagine calling my daughter after the last Queen in the North."

"Oh, you are boring," Margaery sighed. "However shall I survive being married to you?"

"I'd be more worried about how he might survive being married to _you," _Willas called back over his shoulder, laughing when Sansa slapped him in reprimand.

"I dare say Margaery and I are getting the worst of it," she japed. "We are beautiful and powerful and friends of the future Queen – what have you to offer me, Ser Willas, or you to Margaery, brother?"

* * *

"I am well, Shireen, but thank you for your concern."

Shireen frowned at Sweetrobin, lying pale and frail and oddly small, considering how very tall he was, in bed. He had had an attack last night, shaking for torturously long minutes before going so still everyone had been sure that he'd finally died. Lady Arryn had roused half the castle with her screams, and it had taken Father and Lord Jon together to pull her away so the maesters could get to Sweetrobin.

"You are far from well," she argued, settling on the edge of his bed and taking his hand. "Foolish boy, did you take your medicine?"

"I may have forgotten last night," he admitted. "I was somewhat distracted by planning for the trip to Pentos-"

"You cannot go to Pentos if you are in bed or dead," she pointed out. "Do stop being such a brave fool, Robert – we know that you have your sickness. None of us judge you for it, my friend."

He smiled grimly.

"I am worsening, Shireen," he told her baldly. "I may die within the year, and I should like to do something worthwhile with my life before I do. Do this favour for me – tell the princess and the rest that I am not so bad. Tell them you have seen me worse. I will be well enough for council in the morning, I promise you."

"Robert-"

"Please, Shireen," he pleaded. "This is something I must do. Do you understand that? I _must."_

* * *

"Robert insists that he is fine," Shireen said firmly, looking hard at Myrcella when she opened her mouth to argue. "Are you a maester to challenge him, Myrcella? Do you _know _him well enough to challenge him?"

"I am concerned, that is all," Myrcella insisted, folding her arms. "Shireen, if he were to suffer an attack while treating with Prince Aegon-"

"He _will not!" _Shireen snapped, spots of colour rising in her cheeks, living and dead alike. "He forgot to take his medicine, Myrcella, because he is working so hard with Lord Arryn and Father and the rest to plan _your _embassies to the Targaryens, and _still _you think of him as the weak little thing who screamed when he was taken away from Lady Arryn! That is not Robert, Myrcella, and you do not know him at _all _if you think that it is!"

"We all know Sweetrobin is frail, Shireen," Tommen said placatingly. "We have never thought him weak – he has been a friend to me for most of my life. I worry for him, that is all."

"_You _may worry for him as I do, Tommen, but Myrcella sees only the threat to her damned embassies," Shireen spat, gathering her books into her arms and standing up. "I bid you good day, your highnesses, if you will excuse me."

"Shireen-"

"Thank you," she cut over Myrcella. "Good day to you."

She swept from the study they had claimed off the library with her nose in the air and kicked the door shut behind her.

"Oh, well _done, _Myrcella," Margaery said acidly, glancing up from her book. "How easy to forget that Shireen is so deeply in love with Robert Arryn that even she does not know it! How easy to forget that the surest way to offend Shireen is to insult Sweetrobin or imply that he is weak!"

Myrcella blinked, startled, and frowned.

"Shireen is not in love with Sweetrobin," she said. "She cannot be. He is _Sweetrobin."_

"He is my cousin," Robb reminded her gently. "You always do seem to forget that Lady Arryn is one and the same as Aunt Lysa, Cella. Bite your tongue once in a while, love. It will serve you better than searing honesty, you'll find."

"And you are a diplomat now?"

"He'd make a better one than you," Margaery put in. "You have your grandfather's tact, Myrcella, or your uncle Stannis', and while your charming personality has carried you thus far, people will _expect _their Queen to be tactful and intelligent enough to know when it is inappropriate to offer an opinion on something. You should remember that."

* * *

"Sansa?"

Sansa looked up, surprised to find Arya standing in the door of her room looking as though she'd broken something. Probably something valuable and of personal significance to Mother.

"Come in," she said, smiling and patting the space on the bench beside her. "Come, come in."

Arya closed the door and, to Sansa's further surprise, barred it.

"I need to speak with you," Arya said, taking the space Sansa was offering and frowning. "I have had an offer of marriage."

"Gods!" Sansa exclaimed. "Oh, Arya, that's wonderful – who from?"

"Trystane Martell. Through his sister, through Uncle Edmure."

"Oh." Sansa's enthusiasm faded slightly. "He did not come forward himself?"

"No, he did not, and he is quite open in wishing he could marry Edric Dayne instead of me, which is partially why I feel as though I must say no."

"He- he loves another man?! Does Lord Dayne know this?!"

"Oh, Ned knows," Arya laughed bitterly. "And returns the feeling, but apparently also loves _me, _the fool. He seems to think I might agree to- to a sort of _communal _marriage. Trystane and I, apparently, might split our time between Riverrun and Sunspear the way Mother and Father travelled between Riverrun and Winterfell, and he and Ned might- I cannot, Sansa, I cannot do it. Especially not when-"

She broke off, blushing suddenly, and Sansa was amazed to come to the realisation that her little sister, for all her bravado and ease with men and adventures in kissing, was smitten with someone. Mayhaps more than just smitten.

"Is there anyone you _would _like to marry?" Sansa asked gently, pushing Arya's hair back from her face. "Have you met anyone at council…?"

Arya shook her head.

"It does not matter," she said. "I just needed – it is not foolish of me to refuse Prince Trystane's offer, is it? Mother will be livid, but I cannot live like that, Sansa. I will not."

Sansa smiled.

"Have Uncle Brynden speak to her on the matter," Sansa suggested. "She always listens to him, doesn't she?"

* * *

"You know," Joy laughed, running her fingers through Quentyn's hair again and smiling down at him, "none would believe that we sneak away together simply to talk, your highness."

"I will run any man who questions your virtue through," he murmured sleepily, squirming his head closer to her hand. He lay on his front with his head against her knee, stretched out like a lazy cat in sunshine, and all but purred when she shifted to expose him better to the heat of the fire.

"I'm more worried that certain women might question it," she pointed out, imagining what Genna would say, what _Cersei _would say, if they discovered her with Quentyn like this. "It's bad enough that everyone assumes I have loose morals because I'm bastard-born, but-"

"In Dorne, it does not matter if you are bastard born," he said. "My uncle's daughters _and _his paramour are all Sands, you know."

"And yet still the rest of the Kingdoms look down on their little shames," she mused, poking his cheek to rouse him. "Sit up a moment, Quent. I need to speak with you."

"Are we not speaking?" he complained, but he pushed himself up to sit beside her all the same, even going so far as to tuck her hair back behind her ear and smile.

"When were you planning on telling me that your uncle, after some initial disapproval, told you to keep seeing me in the hope of discovering the plans of House Lannister and how my aunt intends to wield influence over Myrcella through Cersei once Myrcella ascends to the throne?"

His jaw dropped and his eyes went wide, and that was all the confirmation she needed.

"Goodbye, Quentyn," she sighed. "I have hoped in vain, it seems. May you find some highborn Dornishwoman who will earn your family's approval, and may you be very happy together, my friend."

* * *

Sweetrobin _was _well enough for council the next morning, and Myrcella carefully avoided approaching him while he was speaking with Shireen, choosing instead to actually _look _at him for the first time in years.

When he had come to King's Landing before he went to Dragonstone to be fostered, he had been a pale, sickly little thing – almost of an age with her, but so small and frail that none would ever believe it had there not been such celebrating in the Vale when at last he'd been born to Lady Arryn.

But now – now, Myrcella could see the Tully in him. He had the same cheekbones and eyes as Robb, although they weren't as striking when combined with dark Arryn hair and the softer jaw, the stronger nose. He would never be vividly handsome in the way of Robb, of the Tyrells, of her brothers, but Myrcella was forced to admit that Robert Arryn was not that pale, sickly little thing he had been when he'd come to court on his way to Dragonstone.

And he was making Shireen laugh, running his left hand through his hair as she covered her mouth with her hand to try and hide her giggles. Myrcella watched her cousin and her foster brother together, and wondered how it was that she'd never noticed just how close they were.

Shireen moved away, touching his sleeve in farewell – a distractingly affectionate action – and it was only because she was watching his arm that Myrcella saw the way Sweetrobin's left hand never stopped shaking.

* * *

Open council was distracting, if only because it meant Trystane damned Martell and Edric bloody Dayne were close enough for Arya to see them, and there was no one in the whole of Westeros she would rather see less.

Sansa seemed to sense her irritation and kept their hands linked the whole way through the preliminaries, even though Willas was sitting on her other side and Arya knew that her sister would rather be holding his hand.

Sansa had always been lucky in all the ways that mattered, Arya thought – she was the beautiful one, the sweet one, the clever one, the elegant one. Oh, she couldn't manage numbers if her life had depended on it, but she had the Pooles, Vayon and Jeyne, to do that for her, and she was cripplingly shy under all her careful courtesies, but somehow none of that had ever hindered her – her betrothal to one of the best looking, best regarded bachelors in the realm was proof enough of that, after all.

Arya had always been jealous of Sansa for all those things, and it had made their relationship difficult at the best of times, but somehow, since Bran had come to Riverrun and begun telling tales of Sansa and her hard work in ruling the North, Arya had come to appreciate her sister in ways she had never thought to before.

Still, it rankled that Sansa was so bloody shy of men and she was promised to someone as annoyingly lovely as Willas Tyrell, whereas nobody seemed to want to marry Arya _because _she was so comfortable in talking with men.

Mayhaps it was because Sansa's figure was so much fuller. Surely that factored in somewhere?

* * *

"Sit down, Lord Greyjoy!" Father boomed, and Myrcella, sitting right beside him, winced at the sheer volume of his voice. "Sit down _all _of you!"

Everyone standing in the hall – Greyjoys and Mormonts for the main – sat quite suddenly, although the Ladies Mormont did it with considerably more grace than the Lords and Lady Greyjoy.

"If I may, Your Grace?" Sansa offered, rising to her feet with that astonishing elegance that she didn't even seem to be aware of. "Bear Island has been part of the North for longer than anyone can remember – it was lost to the Ironborn in the Age of Heroes, and has been under the rule of Winterfell since time immemorial. It makes no sense to suggest that we cede it to Pyke. What claim do they have? Are there marriages between Houses Greyjoy and Mormont as there are between Stark and Mormont? Have the Greyjoys sent men to protect Bear Island from the reavers- Oh," she said, her voice softening into a mocking little laugh. "Do forgive me, Your Grace, but it slipped my mind for a moment that the Greyjoys _sent _the reavers. What sort of lords and ladies set rapers and plunderers on their own people? Pyke cannot have the rights to Bear Island, Your Grace – you may as well say they have the rights to Riverrun."

Silence – always silence, in the wake of a declaration, and Myrcella was heartily sick of loaded silences – greeted Sansa's words, but Father broke it by laughing.

"Sit down, Lady Stark," he huffed, shaking his head and muttering something about damnable Stark women under his breath. "We are not here to argue borders and territory. Bear Island remains part of the North, Lord Greyjoy, and unless you care to try rebelling again it will remain thus forever. Do you have anything else to offer up?"

* * *

"Joy-"

"Leave me be, Quentyn," she said, hurrying away from him and flinching when he caught her wrist.

"You cannot believe that I would hurt you!" he exclaimed, clearly astonished. "Joy, when have I given you any indication that I mean you harm?!"

"Mayhaps when you _spied _on me? I am a Lannister and you a Martell, after all, Quentyn – it is no more complicated than that, is it?"

"It is _infinitely _more complicated than that, fool woman," he fumed. "My uncle and my sister ordered me to relay information from you to them, but I refused, damn you! I said no!"

"You- no. Surely not."

"I said no, Joy," he insisted, tugging her close enough that she was forced to look up into his face, even though he was only very slightly taller than her. Myrcella had passed some scathing comment or other, her speciality as they were, about Quentyn being plain, but Joy wondered if her cousin had ever thought to look Quent in the eye. There was so much more to him than his serious face. "I said no to the Red Viper for you. If that does not assure you that I meant it when I called you friend, then I do not know what will."

* * *

Tommen and Bran, out for a walk, found Joy sitting right up above the main gates, her feet dangling down into thin air and a cup of hot wine, wheedled from the guards, in her hands.

"Dearest Jocelyn," Tommen said, plumping down beside her with a huff. "Whatever are you doing out here in the snow?"

"I might ask you the same question, little cousin," she sighed, sipping her wine and turning to look at him. "Tell me, Tommen – does it ever bother you that everything in life simply falls into Myrcella's lap? She's the most caustically rude bitch I've ever met, and yet nobody seems to see it as a flaw – they find her "witty." She has a sense of entitlement big enough for the whole of House Lannister, and her self-worth is so vastly inflated even my aunt could not match it. And yet, she is popular. She is liked. She has managed to arrange the most perfect match for herself, whereas I- well. The baseborn legitimised bastard heir to Casterly Rock? Who would want her?"

Tommen glanced back uneasily to Bran, who shrugged and sat on Joy's other side.

"Imagine being me," he said lightly. "Second legitimate son of the Lady of Riverrun and Lord Protector of the North, likeable enough, if my siblings and friends are to be believed, and yet there has never been so much as a sniff of interest towards me – yet my older brothers, trueborn and bastard alike, and my eldest sister have all made excellent matches, and my other sister has had offers from some of the most eligible men in the realm. You are not alone in this, Joy."

She sighed again, drained her cup and, showing that Lannister disregard for wealth, tossed if off the wall.

"I suppose not," she admitted. "But occasionally, I think it must be nice to be Myrcella. She always seems to get her own way."

* * *

Father hit Lord Greyjoy on the third-to-last day of council.

Myrcella sat with her hand over her eyes as Jaime and Ser Barristan _and _Lord Jon struggled to hold him back – for a man of over forty years, Father was still in excellent condition, and as strong as a boar – and heaved a sigh.

The tension between the Greyjoys and the rest of the realm had been building almost since the first day of council, but this was still a ridiculous reaction on Father's part – he hadn't reacted so viciously when it had been Oberyn Martell criticising her, after all, and didn't he know that the Dornish would mock him for his cowardice in attacking an old man like Balon Greyjoy and being afraid to confront the Red Viper?

"You will stand down, Greyjoy!" he roared, straining forwards with murder in his eyes. "You will rescind-"

"A Lannister in Baratheon colours," Asha Greyjoy spat, standing at her father's side as her uncles held him back. "A patsy for Tywin Lannister on the throne. You think she will say no when the great Lion of Casterly Rock makes a request of her? More fool you, _King."_

"Leave now," Lord Jon said shortly, huffing and puffing – he was one of the oldest men in the room, and Myrcella worried that the effort of holding Father back might strain his heart. Lady Arryn was always worrying about his heart, worrying that he would die before Sweetrobin was ready to ascend to the Eyrie. "And do not look back."

The Greyjoys swept from the hall, and Myrcella stood to come in front of Father.

"Father, please," she said softly. "Enough is enough. They are gone, the insult is done – there is nothing more you can do for now. Sit down, please."

He stopped straining, but the fury burned hot in his eyes, the same blue as her own.

"I should exile the bastards for this," he snarled. "I should-"

"Myrcella's right, Robert," Lord Jon said. "Sit down before you embarrass yourself."

There was a chorus of uneasy murmurs in the hall, and Myrcella took her place once more at Father's side, watching the doors as they slammed shut behind the Greyjoys.

"We have made enemies of them," Lord Jon said tiredly. "They are more dangerous than you would care to admit, Robert – now we're reliant on the Lannisters to keep them confined-"

"And the Tullys, the Starks and the Tyrells," Father said, waving aside Lord Jon's concern – a concern which annoyed Myrcella, because she hated how everyone seemed to fear the Lannisters gaining power over anything at all – and settling back into his seat.

"Well?" he bellowed, glaring down at the assembly. "Anyone else think they should question my daughter's legitimacy as heir to the throne?"

* * *

"The King and the Queen fly into mad rages at any criticism of the Princess, and yet they seem to believe they can say what they please of everyone else," Arianne growled, throwing herself across a couch. "She is-"

"Careful, sister dear," Trystane hummed, brushing his fingers over her hair as he swanned past. "Even the walls have ears when court is close by."

Quentyn leaned back against the wall – lacking in ears, despite what Trys said, because Quentyn knew that the Spider knew he did not need to spy on Martells – and watched his brother and sister make a great spectacle of themselves.

Or at least, he pretended to watch Arianne and Trys. In reality, he was watching his uncle and his second-eldest cousin, for there was something very dark about the way Nym was flexing her fingers over her thigh, just where he knew she kept one of her many knives.

"What say you, Quent?" Arianne called, looking back at him with a smirk the twin of Trys' – they were so alike they might have been twins, had Trys not been tall and Arianne not been visibly older – and twisting herself to face him properly. "Do you think that the princess might be better off if her most regal parents were aware that she is fucking her betrothed?"

"It is not our place to judge," he said calmly, folding his arms. "And you are hardly one to talk, Arianne."

She cackled at that, and Quentyn rolled his eyes and turned back to watching Oberyn and Nym. There was something about the way Oberyn had watched Princess Myrcella all through council that he did not quite trust.

After all, his family no longer trusted him, not now that he had turned traitor. Not now that he could not find it in himself to hate someone of Lannister blood. Not now that he knew Joy.

* * *

"Joy, where are you taking me-"

Myrcella laughed as her boot caught on a loose flagstone and she stumbled into Joy's back, but her cousin shushed her sharply and only pulled her along faster.

"Joy-"

"Just be quiet and follow, Myrcella," Joy snapped, pausing at the intersection of two corridors before darting across, leading them back into shadows. "We must not be caught!"

Myrcella blinked, startled and hurt, but followed anyways, wondering why there was a flash of crimson under Joy's cloak when her skirts were not of crimson velvet.

* * *

"I never imagined I would find myself saying this, Quentyn, but you are a madman."

Quentyn flushed, ducking around a corner and motioning for Cletus to follow him.

"It might help forge some measure of peace," he said defensively, pushing open the sept doors and heaving a sigh of relief at the sight of the septon lighting candles. "And…"

"And the younger Lady Lannister is a peach," Cletus laughed, clapping Quentyn on the back and pulling Quentyn's sword from his belt. "Seeing as House Lannister has no ancestral blade…?"

"Cletus-"

"She will need a sword to lay across your hands, Quent, otherwise you won't be able to stand as her Lord Protector."

* * *

Myrcella could not quite believe it when Joy lead her to the sept, and she near fainted when she saw Quentyn Martell already standing by the altar, waiting.

"Joy-"

Joy stripped off her outer cloak, revealing the flash of crimson that had so confounded Myrcella to be a marriage cloak, the marriage cloak she'd worn during the opening feast, and made her way to the altar. To Quentyn.

"Joy-"

"You are only here because the Crown Princess is an inarguable witness, Myrcella, so please, sit beside Ser Cletus and be quiet," Joy said firmly, taking Quentyn's hands and smiling shyly. "I am about to be wed."

Myrcella watched in silence as Joy and Quentyn swore on the Seven, but when Quentyn moved to kneel-

"Joy, what of Grandfather?"

"It is high time Uncle Tywin retired from public office, Myrcella," Joy said, hands shaking as she took the sword Cletus held out to her. "You should be thanking us for this, Cella – Dorne will sleep easier knowing that Tywin will not be at the head of your armies for much longer."

"Robb will-"

"And everyone knows that the Lord Protectors of the Reach and the Westerlands command the army in truth, because they command the greatest levies and the largest coffers. Do not be naïve, cousin – it does not suit you."

Quentyn raised his hands, biting his lip, and Joy laid the bare blade across his bare palms.

"You knelt Quentyn of House Martell, Prince of Dorne," Joy said breathlessly, some sort of mad laughter in her voice. Mad indeed, Myrcella thought, for once Genna and Grandfather caught wind of this-

"Rise now, Quentyn of House Lannister, Lord Protector of the Westerlands and first knight of Casterly Rock."

Quentyn rose, sheathed the sword, and took Joy's hands once more.

"Stand now as my lord," she breathed, pink in the cheeks and smiling so hard Myrcella could hardly bear it, "as my husband, as my love."

Quentyn let go of her hands and cradled her face as only moments before he had cradled the sword, and he kissed her as if she might break.

Myrcella was already bracing herself for the battle the morning would bring.

* * *

Away in a room in a great castle of red sandstone, a man with soft hands smiled as he finished his message for a man with a huge belly and sighed happily to himself.

The key to the Seven Kingdoms was the Iron Throne. The key to the Iron Throne was the sovereign. The key to the sovereign, the Queen-in-waiting, was her confidants, and those same confidants were willing to open their ears to a soft-handed man with an ingratiating smile if it meant peace in the realm.

Shireen Baratheon and Robert Arryn were the finest of little birds, because nobody paid the girl with the scars and the boy with the shake any mind, even though the Lady of Dragonstone and Lord of the Eyrie of years to come saw and heard near everything the King saw and heard. Nobody thought that mayhaps the two quietest, most studious of courtiers might be as capable of subterfuge as the King's beautiful, mad wife or the Red Viper.

Aegon Targaryen may never hold the throne in his own right, but his sons would, and that was as close as it may be possible to get without destabilising everything more than absolutely necessary.

The latest message, brought by raven from one of his little birds, a message bearing news of a union that would hopefully prove to be _most _useful, had been a delight.

"A Lannister and a Martell," he chuckled to himself. "It seems Chance is a greater manipulator even than I."

Away in a room in the Red Keep, Varys the Eunuch smiled as he finished his message for Magister Illyrio and sighed happily to himself. Soon, all their work would begin to pay off. Soon.

* * *

**AN: **Brief note on the word "bannerhouses" which is quite clearly made up: Because not all Houses in the Seven Kingdoms follow the inheritance laws of their overlords (the Umbers and Boltons in the North, for example, inherit through the male line, differing from the Starks), I didn't want to say bannermen or bannerwomen, because some, such as Sansa, have both and it would be exclusive to say one or the other. Another reason is that, because of the differences between the Vale, Dorne and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, it just made sense in my head to sort of use an umbrella term.

Hope that made sense. Ciao.


	7. Conflict of Interest

**AN: **The reaction to the last chapter involved a lot of screaming apparently *cough*Jen*cough*, so here's another one.

I also realised how much I talk about whispers in my ASOIAF fic, and I'm pretty sure it's to do with the way Westerosi (high) society is built on a foundation of whispers and rumours and hearsay, and yeah. It just stuck out to me. I don't know why, tbh, but it did. It's a bit like the bath thing in Rough Winds, I suppose.

(also sssh let's not mention that I pretty much forgot the direwolves until now and am shoving them in almost wherever there's a Stark okay sssh)

Um. Bear with me?

* * *

It eventually came to the final day of council, and Myrcella was equal parts terrified and relieved. Terrified, because today Joy and Quentyn intended revealing their grand scheme, but relieved, because soon everything would be in place for the embassies to begin planning in earnest.

Somehow, Joy had managed to keep it from Grandfather and Genna that she had _married – _wedded and, if the careful way she'd sat the following day was any indication, very much bedded – Quentyn Martell, now Quentyn Lannister, and Myrcella could only commend her for it. She had never been able to keep anything from Grandfather, when he deigned to ask her a question, but Joy seemed oddly brave in the face of the most intimidating man in Westeros.

"You seem tense today, your highness," Robb murmured as they walked into the hall together. "Is everything alright?"

"Fine, yes, fine," she assured him, casting about for Joy without any luck. "I am just praying for a quiet day."

He snorted in amusement, rolling his eyes when she glared up at him sharply.

"Cella, you have attended the same council I have, have you not? While it has been many, many things, quiet is not one of them."

She sighed, glanced about for Joy one more time, and set her shoulders.

"Walk me to the dais, then," she ordered, nudging her hip against his teasingly. "I will have much to do today, and I should like to steal some of the cushions from the other chairs before I must begin."

* * *

Sansa bit her lip as Sweetrobin pushed himself to his feet, jaw set in preparation to fight the King and win.

Since his attack the week before, more than one person had suggested that he remain behind when the envoys went to Pentos to treat with Prince Aegon. Sweetrobin had been furious at the notion of his being too weak, too frail, and had exploded – with considerable success – in council the day before, which had convinced many of the naysayers that he was _more _than fit to travel.

Still, Sansa was fond of her little cousin, and she worried for him constantly – Aunt Lysa was the greatest hindrance to him of all, she often thought, more so than his sickness or even Lord Jon's age, as some people said, because Aunt Lysa still saw him as the little boy who'd been torn from her arms to foster on Dragonstone, and that was not Sweetrobin. Not anymore.

"If it please Your Grace," he said through tightly gritted teeth, the knuckles of his left hand white on the cane he sometimes used when he had been unwell, "I will be a part of this envoy regardless of my parents' opinions on the matter. I am given to understand that you listen to my lord father's advice on many matters, but I beg that you disregard his counsel in this case. I am well enough to travel, as the maesters can attest. I will not remain here when I might be of more use in Pentos, sire."

Lord Jon looked worried, a frown setting deep lines in his softly wrinkled face, but the King looked…

Surprised, Sansa supposed. Few enough took the time to get to _know _Sweetrobin, so few enough could hope to understand the sheer depth of his belief in honour and justice and, above all, peace. He would do anything at all for peace, Sansa knew, because he had told her so in the letters they exchanged whenever she wrote to Shireen. Sansa had made it her business to know the other men and women who would one day help her rule Myrcella's realm (save Joffrey Baratheon, because there wasn't a woman in the Seven Kingdoms who did not pray for Renly Baratheon to somehow find a daughter to name his heir in Joffrey's place, Arianne Martell, who simply ignored any letter Sansa sent to her, and Asha Greyjoy, who had always terrified her in theory, and terrified her even more so in practice) as best she could, and even if that was little more than writing letters to them, Sansa felt that she had done more than enough to ensure that they would not be strangers to one another, not like the Seats had been during the Rebellion.

"You say you're well enough, Lord Arryn?" the King asked, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Sansa was just glad he had not actually risen from his seat in challenge, as he had taken to doing, because for all that Sweetrobin had the Tully height, his infirmity had left him slender rather than broad and muscular as Robb and Edmure and Uncle Brynden were, and the King's bulk had intimidated older, harder men than Sweetrobin.

"I _know _I am well enough, Your Grace," Sweetrobin insisted. Sansa prayed that the King did not notice the tremors in Sweetrobin's arm. "I _know _I am."

* * *

Council closed with orders to write dozens of letters and for a great many more people to return to King's Landing than had come from it.

Myrcella walked from the hall on Father's arm, her head held high, and Tommen sauntering behind her with Jaime and Ser Barristan, chatting about this and that with the two men who moulded him into the knight he now is. She could not help but flush with pride at the success council had been, because aside from the Greyjoys and the whispers of dissent from the Martells and their people, it _had _been a success – she had managed to turn a war council into a peace council, with the help of her friends (because despite what Shireen seemed to think, Myrcella _did _have friends) and that was something to be proud of.

Robb caught her eye as she passed, winking as he bowed his head, and she flushed with something else other than pride. She would have to find him after the feast tonight, because he was to return to Winterfell until their marriage, and she had not spent so long without him – five whole moons! – since he had come to court first, twelve to her six. It was almost as unthinkable as Tommen's upcoming absence.

* * *

"We will be _caught!" _Sansa giggled, stumbling back as Willas limped into the room after her on his crutches and pushed the door closed. "Willas-"

"Hush you," he said, pinning her back against the wall, tossing aside his crutches and settling his hands on her hips. "You spoke quite enough at council this past month – I can think of other, more worthwhile, things for you to do with your mouth."

"We're so close to the council chambers, though, someone might walk in-"

"Oh, stop worrying," he laughed, leaning down and kissing that spot under her ear that they'd discovered to be particularly sensitive. He kissed it for quite a while, until she was raising up on her toes to get closer to his mouth and twisting her fingers into his hair. "Or I shan't kiss you again until we're wed."

She whimpered in protest then, lifting his head and kissing him as if her life depended on it, and just as he tightened his hold on her, pressed her harder against his body, as she felt her head spin for lack of air-

The door opened to Joy Lannister and Quentyn Martell, kissing each other madly as Quentyn slammed Joy back against the door, his hands absolutely _everywhere, _and Sansa wondered if she and Willas looked quite so wild when they kissed.

Willas, still holding Sansa in his arms, cleared his throat loudly, blushing deeper than anyone Sansa had ever seen, and Joy and Quentyn sprung apart as if burned.

"Oh, it's only you," Joy said, relieved. "I thought for a moment it was Uncle Tywin, gods forbid. Don't worry – Quent and I are married. I should hope _you_ two weren't intending to go beyond kissing, though."

* * *

"Mother told me she caught you and Willas kissing," Arya said, throwing herself across the bed in her sweaty tunic and breeches, kicking off her boots and tossing aside her skinny little sword. "She is wroth with you over everything since you legitimised Jon."

"She took it as a personal affront," Sansa fumed, tossing aside her hairbrush and clenching her fists. "I legitimised Jon because he is _my _brother, because he has as much Stark blood as I do, or you or the rest of our brothers – it is not as though I asked her to make him a Tully!"

Arya snorted and sat up, tugging off her tunic, leaving her in just the heavy bindings she wore underneath while she had her classes with Syrio. Sansa had always been very vocal in her opinion that they looked terribly uncomfortable, but Arya insisted that it was better some mild discomfort than to have her teats get in the way while she was sparring – and it stopped the men in the yard staring at her quite so hard.

"Mother will never like Jon, Sansa," Arya said. "You know that better even than I do."

"She did not have to react as though I had tried to kill Robb by legitimising Jon," Sansa insisted, her hair falling forward to hide her face. "Jon deserves happiness as much as any of us do, and if this _does _come to war, Margaery will need a strong lord protector – she is my friend, Arya. There is none I would trust better with her safety than Jon."

Arya watched Sansa, her perfect sister who had become so damnably defiant since last they had been together for more than a day or two, and wondered where Sansa had drawn this strength from.

"Do not fight with Mother," Arya warned. "Father will never forgive it of you, you know that."

Sansa sighed.

"I understand her, somewhat," Sansa admitted. "I cannot imagine, if Willas were to father a child by another woman… But what am I to do, Arya? Jon is my brother, and I love him. Mother is my _mother, _and I love her. Am I to choose between them?"

"Jon would never ask you to choose between them," Arya said firmly, "and neither would Mother. You know that, Sansa. Don't be stupid. Mother is hurt, that is all – she will come round."

"She came round to my making Jon my sworn sword, I suppose," Sansa agreed reluctantly. "I just wish that she could stop hating Jon so much. He is as much a part of our family as anyone else."

* * *

"I am sorry for ruining your plans, Marg," Willas said, so sincere Margaery had to laugh. "I-"

"Your marrying Sansa is not going to ruin my plans, Willas," she assured him, patting his arm as they walked through the gardens. It was bitterly cold and the snow crunched under their boots, but it was unlikely that they would be overheard out here. "In fact, it is probably for the better – with Robb Stark marrying Myrcella, we need to have as many ties to the Starks as possible to better secure their support if I am right about our future."

"And the Tullys? They will tie the Starks and Martells together-"

"And I think that even the Martells would bite their tongues and throw their support behind House Tyrell in the event that a Baratheon-Lannister Queen is as mad as I fear Myrcella may become once she comes into her power – and your friendship with Prince Oberyn may help us."

"Just as Prince Quentyn's _marriage _to Joy Lannister will almost certainly hinder us."

Margaery hadn't been sure whether to laugh or cry at the insane revelation that Quentyn Martell and Joy had married in secret – Willas had been reluctant to share where he had come by that little titbit – because it shifted so much of the balance of power that her plans were in crisis now. Not that she would admit that to anyone, of course.

Willas frowned, shaking his head.

"Do you think that it will be enough, Margaery? To ensure peace? It is a risky strategy, I have to say – there are so many variables, so many risks. Can it possibly be enough?"

Margaery pursed her lips, studying the shape of the bare, snow-laden tree that nestled in the corner of the path.

"It will have to be," she said at last. "It will have to be, Willas."

* * *

"Lady Arya, please-"

"What do you want, Lord Dayne?" Arya said sharply, tugging her wrist from Ned's grip and striding away as best she could through the snow. Bran, the traitor, had disappeared as soon as Ned had arrived, and now Arya had no allies.

"Arya," he said softly, catching her by the upper arm and pulling her around to face him. "Please. Trystane told me what happened between you, after I left-"

"He would much rather something happened between _you, _I think," she snapped, trying to extract her arm from his clutches, but his hands were so damnably _strong. _"And frankly, neither of you are my _type."_

Ned jerked away then, looking hurt and angry.

"There is nothing wrong with Trys and I, Arya-"

"I know that," she said, slapping his accusing finger down. "But I still have no desire to marry either of you. Would you be willing to give up Starfall? Would he be willing to give up _you, _Ned?"

"I-"

"You are my friend," she said firmly. "And have been for some time. We will never be more than that, because I am not willing to settle for a husband whose heart belongs to another."

* * *

"Where is _Jocelyn?!" _Genna shrieked, storming from room to room, slamming doors open as she went.

"She mentioned something about entering with Myrcella, I believe," Tyrion called, not bothering to look up from his book. "I think that is what she said, at any road."

Genna looked across to Tywin and smiled.

"For her to be so close to the princess…" she said, her smile widening. "That _is _good news."

"I would say my niece still spends more time with Margaery Tyrell and Shireen and Renly Baratheon," Tyrion opined, turning the page and raising an eyebrow at the unexpectedly graphic illumination. "But yes, I suppose she and Joy are rather close. They trust one another, I think."

Tywin glanced at Tyrion for a moment, something that very nearly became an expression on his face, and then turned back to Genna.

"She should go to King's Landing," he said. "She can learn how to behave there – court will change when Myrcella takes the throne. Jocelyn might help shape it if she is present."

Tyrion turned another page, hiding his smile behind his book. The idea of anyone changing Myrcella's opinion on just about anything was laughable, stubborn thing that she was, and he knew that she would not change much about court at all, despite what Tywin and Genna hoped.

Myrcella had too much of her mother and her father both in her to bend to such pressure.

* * *

Robert chuckled and held Myrcella's hand high over her head as she twirled for him, the heavy velvet skirts of her gown whooshing out around her ankles and showing off her gold-embroidered slippers.

"Papa, stop!" she giggled, tumbling against his chest and laughing, her diadem askew. Her maid, that ferocious woman, surged forward to right it, but Robert just laughed more.

"Not often you call me Papa," he teased, pinching her cheek and laughing again when she swatted his hand away. "Not in years, eh?"

"Hush now," she said, blushing despite her haughty tone. "And don't tell Mother, she'll disapprove."

Cersei disapproved of Myrcella's behaviour a deal too much for Robert's tastes, but Myrcella seemed to hunger for her fool mother's approval, so he tended to help her along to the best of his abilities.

"Do I look beautiful enough for Crown Princess, Papa?" she mocked, leaning into his chest again and wrinkling her nose. "Will I shame you?"

She was more like her grandmother than ever before, with her hair twisted up on the back of her head, in black velvet gown and gold silk cloak, her antlered ring on her right hand and a necklace of black diamonds resting at her collarbone.

"You look regal," he decided, and her spine straightened in pleasure – she was confident in her ability to rule, but she never seemed confident in the confidence of others in her ability, which worried him. He feared that she might become paranoid, as he had in the early years of his reign. "Come then, your mother and brothers will be waiting for us, I imagine."

She smiled and looped her arm through his.

"Do try to stay cheerful, Father," she said, a teasing lilt to her tone. "You've been the most dreadfully morose drunk since we arrived here, and tonight is supposed to be _fun."_

* * *

Tonight proved not to be fun at all, of course, because from the moment Joy and Quentyn walked into the hall together everyone was on knife edge.

The Martells watched everything with disbelieving eyes, but it was Grandfather's face that had Myrcella on tenterhooks. She could never remember him ever looking quite so chillingly _angry _before.

Genna seemed too stunned to properly react, staring blankly at Joy as she and Quentyn sat with their heads close together, laughing at this and that and smiling and exchanging touches too personal – brushing back his hair, adjusting her necklace – to be anything but those of the most intimate lovers.

Myrcella sat where she was and carefully avoided catching Joy's eye, keeping focused on Tommen and Sweetrobin, who was being as serious as ever and complaining about something or other.

It could only last so long, of course, the tenuous peace that allowed for a certain level of conversation to continue in the hall despite the way everyone's eyes flicked to Joy and Quentyn continuously.

"Call for music, Father," she said when she saw Genna toss aside her napkin. "Quickly, Father, call for music, quickly-"

But it was too late – Prince Oberyn had seen Genna and Grandfather rising to their feet, and suddenly Joy and Quentyn were surrounded by Martells and Lannisters.

"We must do something," Myrcella insisted, surging to her feet and pulling Father with her as she darted down from the dais and pushed her way through the crowd to stand with Joy. Cletus Yronwood was already there with Quentyn, glaring steadily at everyone.

Joy took Myrcella's hand and held on tight, lifting her chin and meeting Grandfather's bitterly cold eyes. Quentyn was watching his uncle warily, and Myrcella was startled by the sheer intensity of the Viper's expression.

"I will have the explanation," Father rumbled, pushing Grandfather aside carelessly and standing at Myrcella's side. "Now, Lady Jocelyn, Prince Quentyn-"

"Ah, pardon me, Your Grace, but he is _Lord _Quentyn," Joy said firmly, squeezing Myrcella's hand. "And has been for near a week, actually."

"Excuse me?"

Joy's eyes never left Grandfather's. Myrcella admired her for that.

"My lord and I married six nights past," she said, letting go of Myrcella's hand and taking Quentyn's. "We said our vows before the Seven, with a septon and two witnesses present, and then I laid a sword across his hands _as is my right, _making him Lord Protector of the Westerlands."

Grandfather moved forward, but Prince Oberyn bet him to it, resting a hand on Joy's shoulder.

"So you are my goodniece now," he said, voice velvety poisonous. "An interesting choice, nephew."

"Was it a choice, Uncle?" Quentyn asked quietly, fingers twisting visibly tighter through Joy's. "I felt I had none. Joy and I…" He turned and smiled at her, and Myrcella saw for only the second time that there was some genuine affection between the two.

"Does the walker choose the path?" Arianne scoffed, rolling her eyes and meeting Genna glare for glare.

"Or the path the walker?" Oberyn finished, catching Joy's chin between long fingers and examining her face like she was a brood mare. "Or the lion an ally, mayhaps?"

Joy jerked her face away from him, shifting slightly closer to Quentyn, and they were so flamingly defiant that Myrcella almost quailed.

"Ser Cletus and I were the witnesses," she blurted out, fists clenched to stop herself from turning away from Grandfather. "They speak the truth. You are no longer Lord Protector of the Westerlands, my lord-"

"Nonsense," Grandfather said dismissively. "Lady Lannister is the only one with the right to choose a lord protector-"

"Actually," Quentyn said, "according to the _law, _if the lady refuses to name her husband as lord protector, and her heir marries and _is willing _to name _her _husband lord protector, then the heir's husband _becomes _lord protector."

He paused just a moment too long before adding "My lord."

Father began to laugh, of all things, a great belly laugh. Myrcella took confidence from his confidence.

"Seems you've been outdone, my lord," he said to Grandfather, clapping Quentyn on the shoulder and turning back to the room at large. "We are to celebrate!" he bellowed. "We were done out of a bedding ceremony, but it seems Lady Jocelyn and Prince Quentyn've done their duty!"

A great roar of approval echoed off the high ceiling, but Myrcella saw the way Joy and Quentyn curled closer to one another, away from Grandfather and Prince Oberyn, and she knew that this was far from over.

* * *

Sansa sat beside Joy, trying to hide a smile.

"You could have told me sooner," she murmured, nudging her friend's shoulder with her own. Joy blushed and smiled just slightly.

"It was better that as few as possible knew," she pointed out. "And besides, you seemed rather preoccupied with discovering if it were possible to fuck Willas Tyrell while keeping your maidenhead intact."

_"Joy!"_

"Coupling is wonderful," Joy said with a grin. "You'll love it, Sansa, especially with those lovely hands of Willas'-"

_"Joy! _You mustn't say such things!" Sansa giggled. "Will you be happy with Quentyn, do you think?"

"I think I will come to love him," Joy confided. "But for now, our marriage will help keep the realm in peace until we can guarantee it with a treaty with Prince Aegon. That is more than either of us could have done individually."

"Myrcella disapproves, I think."

"Myrcella disapproves of anything she did not think of first," Joy said dryly, raising an eyebrow and smiling at Sansa. "But come, we should not speak of such things – congratulate me, Sansa! When next you see me, I might have a dark-eyed daughter to show off to you!"

Sansa laughed at that, covering her mouth with a hand to try and restrain herself.

"Oh, my dear Joy, I hope not!" she exclaimed. "Why, we shall be seeing one another again in five short months for Myrcella's coronation – yourself and your lord husband must have had a longer acquaintance than I supposed if you are to have a babe by then."

"She will be the daughter of a Lannister and a Martell," Joy teased. "Such fierce blood – why, she will be ordering the household at the Rock about before I even give birth to her! She will need barely half the time in the womb of a weaker daughter!"

"Here her Roar as she stands Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken?" Sansa mocked, sticking her tongue out when Joy pulled a face.

"Oh, and yours will not be the finest daughters to have ever been born?" Joy mocked. "Growing Strong even though Winter is Coming? You are silly, Sansa."

They laughed together, and Sansa hoped that she had at least for a time distracted Joy from the murderous glares of both her aunt and uncle and Quentyn's uncle and sister.

* * *

Myrcella leaned back against the wall, rubbing at her temples, and heaved a sigh.

"I cannot _believe-_"

"It was a brilliant move," Sweetrobin said, smiling just slightly. "Lady Tyrell would have been proud, I'm sure. I'm amazed none of us thought of it, to be frank. It is a most… Delightfully _neat _solution to so many of our problems."

Shireen laughed quietly, huddling between Sweetrobin and Tommen for warmth. Myrcella stayed far away to avoid the haze of pipe smoke that surrounded the trio, for Tommen puffed away as soon as he was away from Mother, and Sweetrobin, while he did not partake often, reputedly had a great skill for smoking. Mother had _raged _when Tyrion arrived home from one of his grand tours to the Summer Isles with that ebony gold-trimmed pipe of Tommen's, but Tommen had discovered such a taste for it that it had proved impossible to stop him.

"I'm sure darling Margaery is kicking herself for not brokering the match before Joy did it for herself," she said, shaking her head. "Ah, we will have other matches to make soon enough – you never know, little cousin," she added, grinning at Tommen, "the Mother of Dragons may take a liking to you and decide she wants to add you to her entourage. The Usurper's son and Kingslayer's nephew – now _there _is a worthy consort for a warrior queen if ever there was one!"

* * *

"There _must _be some way to set aside the marriage!" Genna fumed. "She married without consent-"

"She is more than of age," Lord Jon said tiredly. "I am sorry, Lady Lannister, but your niece's marriage stands. There is nothing to be done, not now it's been consummated."

"Can we be sure it has?" Genna demanded, pacing furiously over and back before Robert's desk. "I demand that you order her to be examined-"

"Lady Lannister," Robert barked, rising to his feet, glad that he hadn't drank quite as much as usual. "Your heir is married. Your brother is no longer Lord Protector of the Westerlands. It is done, and we cannot give the girl a new maidenhead or change the law."

Tywin stood just in the shadows, more pensive than Robert ever remembered seeing his goodfather – it wasn't like the man to betray his emotions even the tiniest measure, but Robert could only suppose that Tywin had intended on somehow circumventing the law – or intimidating Joy – and remaining as Lord Protector until the day he died.

Joy would not be intimidated, though. She'd known enough to be certain to lay a blade across Quentyn Martell's hands, and that was a rite as old as Westeros itself that would not, _could _not, be ignored, and she'd had the Crown Princess witness the ceremony.

"There is nothing to be done," Robert reiterated. "She is a woman wed now, and the Martell boy is her husband."

* * *

"I would have your reasons for refusing Prince Trystane, Arya!" Mother called after her as she stormed out of the room.

_He's in love with another man, _she wanted to shout back, but that would achieve nothing other than to vex Mother even more and annoy Father. It would also risk angering the Martells, and with everyone already so on edge with Joy and Quentyn's marriage…

"It's not fair," she fumed to Nymeria, stomping along the corridor with a mind to staying the night in either Edmure or Bran's rooms, "the others all have it so easy with Tyrells and Myrcella, and I have _this _nonsense. It's not _fair!"_

She kicked open the door of Edmure's rooms, slammed it shut behind her, and threw open the door of his bedchamber-

He blinked dazedly from a tangle of Arianne Martell and Nym and Tyene Sand, and Arya stood in the doorway with her mouth open for a long moment.

"I'll go find Bran," she said eventually, turning and closing the door carefully behind her, crossing the antechamber and doing the same with the outer door.

As soon as she was in the corridor, she began to laugh, and then she and Nymeria sprinted to find Bran and Summer as quickly as they could.

* * *

"You saw how close she came to giving in to the Lannisters this evening."

Jon crossed his arms and leaned back against the table at Margaery's side. She sat with her elbows on the tabletop and the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes, and he could never remember her looking so very focused.

It was more attractive than he could ever have imagined, which was annoyingly distracting.

"She won't become a figurehead for the Lannisters, Margaery," he said firmly. "She's too much a Baratheon for that." Too stubborn, he meant, but it amounted to much the same either way – there was too much of her father in her for Myrcella to ever be a catspaw for anyone, particularly the Lannisters.

"She is terrified of her grandfather," Margaery disagreed. "You do not know it because you hear of her mainly through your brother and sisters, but behind her bluff and bluster, Myrcella is a great craven. I worry that she will bow to whatever Tywin asks of her when she ascends."

"She would not!" Jon exclaimed, stunned by the very notion. "Margaery, she is stronger than that-"

"I have been her friend since she was a small child, Jon," Margaery sighed, sitting up and fingering the edge of the green-and-gold cloak she'd thrown about his shoulders on a whim during the dancing with one hand and burying the other in Ghost's ruff. Jon stifled a shudder of pleasure at the shared sensation. "She is not so strong as everyone seems to think – she will break before she bends, and when she breaks, she will turn to the Lannisters to put her back together."

* * *

Myrcella opened her door so late it was early, holding it just wide enough to poke her head out.

"Joy?" she gasped, astonished. "What are you- and Quentyn as well! Why in the world are you _here?!"_

"We rather need to speak with you," Joy said urgently. "Do let us in, Cella-"

"Oh, wait a moment," she huffed, leaving the door ajar as she scurried back to the bed, tugged on Robb's hand to get him out from underneath – not that is was a particularly effective hiding place, with the full length of Grey Wind's tail sticking out from the foot of the bed – and frantically began pulling on her shift and smallclothes and robe. He had his breeches and undershirt on by the time Joy and Quentyn lost their patience, and there was a strange sort of stand-off while they stood by the door and Robb and Myrcella stayed frozen and half-dressed by the bed.

"Well this is wonderful," Myrcella snarled, belting her robe tightly at her waist and ignoring Robb's badly disguised snickering as he laced his breeches. "Just bloody wonderful, is it not?"

"Quite so," Joy remarked, pushing the door closed and taking the seat nearest the window. "Dare I say it, Ser Robb, you have the most remarkably muscular arms."

"Greatsword and hammer, my lady," Robb said with a grin. Myrcella thumped him in his most remarkably muscular arm and threw his tunic at him. "I apologise, your highness, am I to deflect compliments to my person when they are not matched with a compliment to yours?"

Joy laughed under her breath. "Quick, Quentyn, say something nice about Myrcella's teats else she'll throw a tantrum and we shall never get anything done."

Quentyn blushed and huffed and looked mortified, and Joy patted his cheek affectionately before turning back to Myrcella.

"Aunt Genna and Uncle Tywin wish to petition the court to have our marriage dissolved or, at least, Tywin restored as Lord Protector of the Westerlands and Quentyn removed from the office of Warden of the West which is now rightfully his to share with Genna. I would ask that you intervene on our behalf by way of pointing out that there is no lawful precedent-"

"Is there an _un_lawful precedent? Because my grandfather is not above using it."

"There is little your grandfather is not above doing," Quentyn said sharply. "And I am yet amazed that he has not taken lead from Harren Hoare and usurped your aunt's power-"

"How _dare _you-"

"I dare because it was the blood of my aunt and my cousin that stained the ground before the throne your father now sits, Princess. It is my cousin that wishes to take back what is rightfully his-"

"My father is rightful king of this realm-"

"By _conquest," _Quentyn said. "By killing off the rightful heirs-"

"Now is not the time," Joy said, laying a hand on Quentyn's arm and frowning at Myrcella. "We are serious though, Cella. You must intervene – our marriage was a gamble, yes, but if it can stand as it _must, _then we are the best hope towards binding the realm together. You know that as well as anyone and better than most, cousin."

"They're right, Cella," Robb said. He paused thoughtfully in tying his boots. "You do have to intervene – your father is likely to support the marriage just to spite your grandfather, and because Lord Arryn has a good head on his shoulders and will advise His Grace so, but the Tyrells…"

"May well do anything they can to spite the Martells," Quentyn agreed. "It is a conundrum, but as the soon-to-be Queen and Lord Protector of the realm, you are two of the most influential people in Westeros. We _need _you to help us maintain our union."

Myrcella chewed on her lip and sat down on the edge of the bed beside Robb.

"I could ask Father to rule by decree that your marriage is an unbreakable covenant," she said unsurely, "but there would have to be some sort of treaty brokered between Houses Lannister and Martell to make the decree worth it."

"Peace, mayhaps?" Quentyn suggested, leaning over the back of Joy's chair and toying with a stray curl of her hair. "That was our intention in marrying, after all."

* * *

Shireen and Sweetrobin broke their fast with her father the following morning, Sweetrobin ignoring his porridge in favour of a pipe of admittedly vile-smelling Tyroshi leaf and serious plotting over his favourite notebook.

"Be wary of Lord Tywin," he said around his pipestem, "for he will try to separate you and Myrcella. He probably blames us for corrupting Joy and convincing her to marry Quentyn."

"You have been known to scheme in the past," Lord Stannis said dryly – but then, he said everything dryly and therefore it was hard to tell if there was some measure of cutting wit intended or not – before frowning even deeper than usual. "Stay away from Tywin Lannister, both of you."

Shireen rolled her eyes and patted his hand placatingly before turning to Sweetrobin.

"What do you propose I do to circumvent his probable forbidding of Myrcella spending time in my company, Robert?"

"Ignore him, for the most part," Sweetrobin laughed, setting down his pen and bracing his hand hard on the table top until the tremors stopped. "And if he dares confront you, accuse him before court of harassing you."

"I shall set my brave Ser Devan on him should he confront me," Shireen teased, wrinkling her nose. "And I daresay dear Duram would cripple his other hand in my defence."

Sweetrobin allowed himself a smile, shaking his head in amusement – everyone at court whispered of poor ugly Shireen, with none of the Baratheon looks and only a fraction of the charm, but they did not see the way the lords of the Crownlands (almost all lords, almost all brought to Westeros with the Targaryens and settled near King's Landing for that very reason) turned first to her with their fealty, then to Lord Stannis and only then to the crown and Iron Throne. They did not see the way the laughter in her eyes – as Baratheon blue as Myrcella's and twice as full of Baratheon fury – drew her people close to her, the way her kind nature kept them close.

No, Shireen Baratheon was probably the most sorely underestimated woman in the Seven Kingdoms, and had circumstances been different Sweetrobin would have pursued her with every ounce of his power in order to have her as his wife.

Circumstances were not different, however much they both may wish they were, and so he and Shireen had long ago settled for being friends and confidants and allies, and it would have to be enough for them. That had not stopped a raging flash of jealousy when Sweetrobin had seen Bran, his cousin Bran, flirting with Shireen several times over the month council had spent at Harrenhall, of course, but that could not be helped.

"I do wish you were coming to court," Shireen sighed, leaning back and nibbling on the edge of her toasted wheaten bread. "I shall have no one to gossip with if you are in the Eyrie and Margaery is at Highgarden. How terribly boring it will be."

"I have not been home in too long," he pointed out. "And Mother has been… Difficult all during council. It is for the best that I spend some time with her before going to Pentos, I think."

Had there been anyone else at all present – even Tommen or Bran, mayhaps especially Tommen or Bran – Sweetrobin would not have dared speak so about his mother. Lord Stannis and Shireen knew the truth of it all, just as they alone outside of his parents and maesters and Harry knew the true extent of his illness, and so it never occurred to him to watch his words when he was with them.

They knew Mother was mad, knew some of the details of her madness, and knew why Father did his best to keep her confined to the Eyrie for her own good – and to keep her away from Littlefinger Baelish – and knew that Sweetrobin remained conflicted on his mother's welfare. He could neither fault Father nor condemn him, not truly, but it still hurt to see Aunt Catelyn and Uncle Edmure so healthy and charming and brilliantly, achingly _alive, _when Mother came to resemble a walking corpse lost in half-memories augmented with fantasy more and more every time he saw her.

"I will return to court for the coronation," he added with a smile that was only slightly forced. It was rarely difficult to smile for Shireen. "I imagine you can survive without me for that long, my lady."

* * *

It was difficult to decipher who Mother was angrier with when they all sat down to break their fast together – Sansa for legitimising Jon, Jon for existing at all, Arya for refusing Trystane's suit, Robb for running into her on his way back from Myrcella's chambers in the pre-dawn hours, or Father for deciding to spend the moons until Jon's wedding at Highgarden in Winterfell with Sansa, making preparations for _her _wedding, and setting everything in place for when she and Willas Tyrell took over the running of Winterfell and the North entirely, rather than at Riverrun, with Mother.

The only ones she didn't seem angry with were Bran and Rickon, although it was a near thing when she discovered Rickon passing his bacon under the table to Shaggydog.

"This has gone on long enough," Father said at last, setting down his cup with a ringing thud. "Cat, none of the children set out to hurt you."

"I never said they did," Mother said primly, sipping her goat's milk – Sansa had no clue how she could stomach the stuff – and not looking at him. "What made you think I am hurt?"

"You've barely spoken two words to any of us together since I legitimised Jon," Sansa said quietly. "I did not mean to hurt you by it, Mother – I did it-"

"So he might be one of Princess Myrcella's ambassadors," Mother broke in. "I know."

Sansa sighed and poked mutinously at her porridge, more honey than oats because nobody had thought to take the honeypot away from her, and tried to envision how she should like it if, in years to come, Willas fathered a son with another woman and their daughter, the next Lady of Winterfell, wanted to legitimise him a Stark. She knew it could not work like that – any bastard of Willas' could only be made a Tyrell, not a Stark – but the very idea turned her stomach.

When Sansa had been very little, when they had split the year between Winterfell and Riverrun, she had not realised why Mother hated Jon so. It could not have been because of how he looked, because he looked so like Father and Arya and Uncle Benjen and Mother loved Father and Arya and seemed fond of Uncle Benjen. It could not have been because he was a boy, because Robb was a boy and Mother loved him fiercely.

She had raged about it sometimes, when she and Jon and Robb were playing in the godswood or swimming in the river, before Arya was really big enough to come with them, and it had been while eating pears so ripe they dripped syrup on the banks of the Tumblestone that Jon and Robb had, with the patience of ten year olds thinking they were gods for knowing something she did not, explained what "bastard" meant.

She had wondered at Mother hating Jon – to her mind, Jon had done nothing wrong, and it was Father who should have been the subject of Mother's anger – but as the years wore on, Sansa began to understand why. Mother loved Father, had to keep loving him if their marriage was to survive and flourish, and resenting him for bringing Jon into their family would break that.

Still, it did not give Mother the right to be angry that Sansa and Arya and their brothers loved Jon. Nothing could give anyone that right – he was their brother, too, and that was the end of it.

It gave her no pleasure to fight with Mother, though. She wondered how she might put things right between them, and quickly – they were to part ways by noon, and Sansa could not bear the thought of bad blood festering between them for four long moons.


	8. Departures

"What do you think the King will do if he hears you were in the Princess' rooms last night? What do you think the Queen will do?!"

Robb looked determinedly at his boots as Mother raged at him, and Sansa rolled her eyes. She'd thought that Myrcella, at least, would have the good sense to ensure they were not caught – Arya had shared her suspicions about Robb and Myrcella during the first week of council, over breakfast with Bran and Edmure, and while they had all thought it a fine jape, Sansa had worried precisely as Mother was worrying: What if Queen Cersei found them out?

"They will not hear," Robb muttered, looking remarkably childish for a man of near two-and-twenty. "Neither Myrcella nor myself will tell them, and I hope you shan't either, Mother."

Mother drew herself up, but then sagged.

"You are headstrong," she sighed. "So very like your uncle Brandon."

Robb glanced to Sansa at that, both of them uneasy in the knowledge that in another life, they might have been Brandon Stark's children, not Eddard's, and Sansa heir to Riverrun rather than Lady of Winterfell.

"You must be more careful," she went on. "At least you will be at Winterfell until the coronation…"

"Until Jon's wedding," Robb corrected her, and Sansa winced – Mother still hadn't quite come to terms with her having legitimised Jon and him having made such an unbelievably advantageous match. "But I take your meaning. I am sorry, Mother."

"Tell me you at least did not dishonour her," Mother said tiredly, covering her eyes with a hand that trembled ever so slightly. Council had been stressful for her, between the business with Jon, Arya refusing Prince Trystane's offer (without giving the true reasons), and the looming threat of the Greyjoys, always visited upon the western coast which meant Seagard and its environs, and her health was suffering because of it. She was sleeping only a little, had no appetite, and her hair had lost some of its lustre.

But that seemed to pale in comparison to her disgust at Robb's silence.

"You are more like your uncle than I ever thought," she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose the way Arya did when she was annoyed. "You will not lie with the princess again until you are married."

"Mother-"

"You will not touch her, you will not kiss her. You will behave properly, as you were raised to behave. Am I understood?"

"Mother is right, Robb," Sansa agreed. "The risk of being discovered is too great. You and Myrcella cannot afford for anyone to find you out, especially not with her coronation and your wedding coming up."

"I am not a boy to be spoken to like this, Sansa."

Sansa drew back her shoulders, a familiar annoyance building at the back of her mind where she could almost ignore it.

"In this moment, we speak as Lady Tully and Lady Stark," she said sharply. "Your mother and your liege, the head of your House and of your father's House. You will do as we say, Robb, and you will not lie with Myrcella again."

"It is not as if we are foolish enough to risk conceiving a child-"

"You should not need to consider such things!" Mother snapped. "You were not even betrothed until a week ago – what would you have done if the King had accepted an offer from the Martells or the Tyrells?"

Robb's jaw clenched, and Sansa bit back a sigh.

"Myrcella would never have married anyone but me," he insisted. "She will never marry anyone but me."

"How long have you been lovers?"

"We've only lain together three times," Robb admitted. "The night before I left King's Landing, the first night of council and last night. What does it truly matter, Mother? She and I are to be married, and no one need ever know-"

"It matters because you were raised better than this!" Mother exclaimed. "If I see you alone in Princess Myrcella's company even once more before you are wed, I will tell your father of this!"

* * *

"I can see Lady Tully's point," Jon admitted as he saddled Freckle for Sansa. "We both know that Robb can be careless even at his most careful. He is reckless, Sansa, and even the most careful man can find himself ruining a woman."

"But-"

"You would consider Father the most careful of men, yes?"

"Aside from perhaps Lord Jon and Lord Stannis, yes. Why?"

"Father ruined a woman enough for me to be born," Jon pointed out, tightening the belly-strap and turning to lead Freckle out of her stall. "And he would have gone to every length to ensure he did not get a bastard on any woman."

"Which just goes to show how very much your mother wanted you," Sansa said firmly, taking Freckle's reins and touching Jon's arm with her other hand. "I am sorry, Jon, I never thought-"

"Not to worry," he assured her with a smile. "Do you need anything else, or might I excuse myself for a while? I have business to attend to before we leave."

Sansa couldn't quite stop herself from grinning.

"Would this business happen to have a penchant for rose scented perfume?"

Jon tapped the side of his nose and winked.

"No more than the reason you are wearing a scarf breeds the finest horses in the realm, sister," he mocked, darting away before she could react.

She touched the mark she'd hoped to hide, red and tender and just under her ear, and blushed. Damn Jon for having noticed it, anyways! Now she couldn't even tease him about having to have a private farewell with Margaery!

* * *

Arya bit her lip to keep from laughing, unable to look either left or right for fear of setting Bran or Sweetrobin off, and entirely incapable of looking Edmure in the face.

"Do you promise, Arya?" he begged. "Cat will murder me-"

"If only she knew of how little consequence such things are to the Martells," Arya said, shaking her head and ducking to hide her grin behind her hair. "I promise, Uncle – Mother won't hear a word about your evening with Princess Arianne from me."

Edmure thanked her and took his leave, and then Bran and Sweetrobin grinned wickedly.

"He didn't make us promise a thing!" Bran said gleefully, and Arya slapped him over the back of the head and extracted a promise of her own from him.

"If Prince Doran were so worried about his daughter's maidenhead as Aunt Catelyn, mayhaps Princess Arianne and Uncle Edmure would be married by now," Sweetrobin mused idly, pulling his pipe from his pocket and lighting up with a wry little smile. Sweetrobin did most things with a wry little smile, that and a tongue so sharp it frightened away all but the stupidest bullies, like Joffrey Baratheon. "But alas, Dorne is rather easier about such things than the Riverlands, and Uncle Edmure is a bachelor yet."

"Yes, well, Princess Arianne seems about as happy about that as Edmure is," Arya said, shaking her head. "I really do wonder at him putting it off so long – she's near eight years older than Sansa, which leaves her six-and-twenty – she shan't be of child-bearing age forever!"

"And now her present heir is rendered unsuitable by dint of having married a Lannister," Sweetrobin agreed, motioning for Arya to lead the way along the corridor, puffing smoke rings as they walked. "Her younger brother is of an inclination that is unlikely to produce heirs, and beyond that she has only bastard cousins, none of whom are suitable for ruling Dorne even if they were to be legitimised, by all reports."

"You seem to get an awful lot of reports, Robert," Arya noted curiously. "Robb always did say you were terribly nosy."

"I've gotten quieter about being nosy," he said enigmatically, and talk turned to how they might use their tawdry knowledge to their advantage against Edmure in the coming months.

* * *

"I'm coming to King's Landing, of course," Shireen said quite calmly, smiling in precisely the way she knew reminded the King of his father and made the Queen's blood boil. "The princess will need her friends around her during the preparations for the coronation and the wedding, and besides, if I am to go to Meereen, well, I ought to be part of the planning for that, too, ought I not, Uncle?"

That was a recent development, one Shireen was positive Father disapproved of, but she and Robert had discussed it at great length and agreed that it was best that there was one of them on either of the diplomatic missions to make sure nobody said anything too foolish, or at least so that they might know precisely what was said if disaster could not be averted. Father (by way of Ser Davos and Lord Jon and, occasionally, when Shireen truly wanted something very, very badly and even Ser Davos was against it, Great-Grandfather Estermont, who was always willing to indulge the girl who so reminded him of his Steffon) generally came round to things that Shireen and Robert had discussed at great length.

"Aye, I suppose," the King laughed, motioning for her to join Myrcella and Tommen and, to Shireen's bemusement, Joffrey, who would apparently be joining them in the city for a time. King's Landing was always considerably more appealing when Joffrey was at Storm's End, although that often robbed them of Renly's company, because somebody had to keep watch on Joffrey. "Off with you, girl, go on."

She chose instead to nudge her horse – Shireen detested riding, but better ride than be cooped up in a wheelhouse with the Queen, of all people, and she was a passable rider even if she derived no pleasure from it – towards the Arryn party, just preparing now to leave.

"Stay safe, my friend," she said warmly, offering her hand to Robert. He took it and kissed it, smiling slightly, and then sighed.

"If you promise to allow Tommen to look after you in that cesspit," he bargained. "And if you swear to come to my father if you have any problems. I do worry for you, Shireen."

"And I for you, Robert, but what is life without a little risk?" she teased, winking and taking his hand one last time, making sure to pass over her last-minute notes so he could add them to the file. "Farewell, Sweetrobin. 'Til the coronation!"

He wrinkled his nose, tucked her notes into his inner pocket as he extracted his pipe and tinderbox, and waved her away.

"Be gone!" he laughed. "Go, before I take a fit of anxiety!"

Harry Hardyng, Robert's over-protective and quite sweet, in a slightly dim sort of way, cousin and heir thumped him hard in the shoulder.

"No taking fits," he warned as Shireen carefully guided her horse away, back towards Myrcella and Tommen.

Now that Robert had the notes, she would sleep easier.

* * *

Sansa held tight to Mother for a moment too long, wishing she knew how to set things right between them all.

"I'm sorry for not warning you that I was going to legitimise Jon," she blurted out, feeling horrible for it all. "And then this business-"

"I know, sweetling," Mother assured her, kissing her cheek and smiling before climbing up onto her horse. "It was a shock, but I understand." She sighed. "We are coming to war, after all. Things are different now."

* * *

Soon, there was only House Baratheon left at Harrenhall with Lady Whent, who seemed somehow eager for them to leave even as she pressed every sort of hospitality on them.

Shireen watched the Queen carefully, noted the disdainful curve of her lip, the contempt gleaming in her brilliant eyes, and bit back a smile when Cersei climbed into the wheelhouse. Shireen may have hated riding, but better to be seen, to have the people see that their ladies were not the weak little things the Targaryens had spent near to three hundred years claiming them to be.

Cersei's hair would always be perfect, her dress impeccable, but Shireen preferred knots and splashes of mud because with them came a strange sort of respect from the smallfolk.

More importantly, the other ladies all rode – Myrcella, Lady Stark, Lady Tyrell, Lady Arya (although Arya seemed to be out of the saddle only rarely, in Shireen's experience, was half a horse herself), Lady Tully, even Fat Genna, sometimes, although Shireen unkindly supposed that it was a fine horse indeed that could have borne Genna Lannister's bulk all the way from Harrenhall to Casterly Rock. Shireen was built like her father, lean and spare, and while she did not share his severe views on indulgence she did feel that what Myrcella laughed off as "a little fat around her middle" was, in Genna Lannister's case, a mark of extreme overindulgence, and that she did not approve of.

Cersei may have hoped to start a trend by travelling by wheelhouse, but even the Queen did not have that sort of influence, not when she was Queen only by virtue of being the King's wife.

Myrcella, when she ascended to the throne, would be a different story altogether. Shireen was already dreading the sort of things that would become fashionable once her cousin reached the peak of influence – low, broad necklines unsuited for those of a slighter frame and smaller bust, for example. Hunting, which was so abominably boringand messy. Shireen quelled a shudder. She was fond of Myrcella, but there was rather too much of the King in his daughter for Shireen's comfort.

"Do you know," Tommen said, looking like the Kingslayer and Renly (by far and away Shireen's favourite relation, save Tommen) all at once. "I rather think Cella was fucking Robb Stark last night."

Shireen burst out laughing, not caring that it was far from ladylike to do so because she knew that those who carried whispers among the assembled company carried them primarily to people she knew and trusted, and Tommen grinned and drew his pipe from somewhere (he and Robert had successfully become trendsetters when they'd taken up smoking, because one could hardly turn about in the city but there was a young man smoking a curly pipe and trying to form shapes from the smoke).

"Mother will pitch a fit if she hears, of course," Tommen went on, grinning wider around the stem of his pipe, "and Father, well, it's beyond time his war hammer had a bloodbath, don't you think?"

"Poor Robb," Shireen agreed, laughing again when Tommen mimed braining himself with his pipe and then slumped limp over his horse's neck (Tommen and Myrcella's horses always had ostentatiously Baratheon names like Storm and Thunder, or, when they were very small, Boom-Boom the pony, who had been named by an enthusiastic Myrcella after her first true Storm's End storm. Shireen's horse was called Skip, according to Devan, and that was quite enough of a name for a horse, in her opinion. He and Sweetrobin had once teased that if Shireen had her way, all horses would be trained to answer to Creature, and she'd had little choice but to laugh and admit that it was true.)

"But however would my aunt and uncle discover such a thing, cousin? For I have no proof to offer them, and such speculation would only cause harm to your sister's reputation."

Tommen lit his pipe as he sat up.

"Oh, I'd never breathe a word to Father or Mother," he said, waving away Shireen's mocking concern. "But it does worry Cella something rotten when we gossip about her, haven't you noticed?"

(Shireen was unsure if it meant anything, if her father and Lord Arryn's murmured (but still overheard by sharp ears) conversations meant anything, but Joffrey's horses always had Lannister names).

* * *

"How's your leg this morning?" Margaery asked as soon as she found Willas the following morning. "Well enough to ride, I hope?"

"I'm fine, Margie," he sighed, rolling his eyes as he crutched along beside her through the snow. "Do stop worrying – you fuss terribly when you're worried, you know."

"I do not!"

"You do," Garlan disagreed with a smile, appearing from his own tent and wrapping another cloak around her shoulders. "Come now, little sister, we mean no harm – it's endearing when it's directed at someone else."

"Oh, stop it," she said crossly, hating how childish she immediately became when either Willas or Garlan took it into their heads to tease her. "I do not have time for this-"

"You can hardly begin planning your wedding on the road," Willas said, rolling his eyes. "Why, Sansa told me-"

Garlan started humming the nameless march that was played during weddings in Highgarden, and Willas and Margaery both blushed furiously.

"Two Starks," he laughed. "To think, there's not been a Stark wed to a Tyrell since before the Conquest, and now two at once!"

"Shut up," Willas and Margaery said together, and then all three laughed.

"Come now," Willas said after a moment. "What drove you to search me out, little sister? Surely it was important if it drew you from the warmth of your tent into this abominable cold?"

"I want you to come speak with Grandmother and Father with me," Margaery said. "Or rather, I want you to convince Grandfather to come speak with Grandmother and Father and me. You know how he and Grandmother are about one another."

They detested one another with ever decreasing levels of civility, much to Margaery's chagrin, although Willas seemed to tolerate Grandfather's ever sharper tongue with more grace than he did Grandmother's, and that probably meant that there was a good reason for it – Margaery had always found her eldest brother's abhorrence of bad manners amusing, especially when considered in the light of his slow but vicious temper and his tendency to swear brilliantly when even slightly frustrated.

"I'd best go find him then," Willas said with a smile. "Do you need anyone else?"

"No, just Grandfather," Margaery assured him, shooing him off and shoving Garlan after him. "Go on, sers, bring me our grandsire. I have much to discuss – and if you see Loras, tell him I am hurt that he thought to join Lord Renly in the capital, and that I much desire to speak with him about his going to join Lord Renly in the capital."

Willas and Garlan exchanged a look that was both amused and revolted, because neither of them seemed to have much time for the politics that Margaery so excelled at, but they went about their tasks without complaint. They never complained, really, not unless what she was asking was truly unreasonable.

* * *

Joy and Quentyn rode ahead of the rest of the column with two guards, both of whom Joy was reasonably certain were not completely under Tywin's sway.

"You'll hate Casterly Rock," she told Quentyn cheerfully. "It's horrible – far too much gold, all shiny and too-bright all of the time. Some of it's alright, I suppose, the sept is pretty and the Stone Garden is strange and quite interesting. Best bits are outside the castle, of course – the coves within the bounds are beautiful- Oh! I forgot the library! You'll love it, Tyrion half lives there, and Lannisport itself is much nicer than King's Landing, we shall have to take a tour of the city. I do hate the way everyone bows and scrapes, but I rather think Tywin and Genna have them terrified of anyone from the Rock, you know. I've never been to Oldtown, of course, but I daresay we have the loveliest city in the realm."

"Clearly you have never been to Sunspear," Quentyn teased dryly, rolling his eyes. "It outstrips everything I have seen north of the Marches, even the famed beauty of Highgarden."

"I should like to see Highgarden," Joy said wistfully, smiling slightly. "Margaery does sell it well, I'll give her that."

"It is too pretty," he told her, guiding his horse a little closer to hers. "And besides, the Tyrells are bothersome hosts – they never leave you to your own devices, if they can help it."

"Maybe if your name hadn't been Martell when you visited, you might have had more freedom," she japed, sticking out her tongue.

* * *

"I will be much relieved to be through the snow," Arianne heard Ellaria Sand say, and she was inclined to agree – only the Northerners had seemed untroubled by the weather, admittedly, but Arianne would have been slow to believe that any were so troubled by it as her and her people (my father's people still, she corrected herself).

"We are nearly to the Prince's Pass now," Sylva shivered at Arianne's side, layer upon layer of cloaks blurring her into a pile of wool in her saddle. "The air is already warmer – Jeyne and Jennelyn say they will send on ahead to their father as soon as we enter the Pass."

The Fowler twins were just a little way back, with Nym, and Arianne would be eternally grateful to them if they did as promised. Lord Fowler would hopefully have hot drinks and fresh clothes and gods alone knew what else waiting for them, as well as the better weather which should await them in the Pass – the Marches were not so warm as Dorne proper, but even so they rarely if ever saw snow at all, much less this abominable blanket that lay three feet deep on the ground in places.

"Do you truly believe that your plan will work?" Tyene asked curiously, huddling as close as their horses would allow for warmth and privacy both. "Especially now after Quentyn's folly?"

Arianne, safely under her own layers of cloak, touched her belly with gloved fingertips.

"I should think so," she said with a shrug. "It is one thing for father's brother to have a litter of bastards, but quite another for his heir to put a start to her own collection – particularly when her child was fathered by the brother of a northern lady of such high standing."

Tyene smiled somewhere behind the scarf wrapped over her face.

"I imagine Lord Edmure will be even more surprised than your father," she said, laughter in her voice, warm in the midst of all this damnable cold.


End file.
